Clematis redux

     Perhaps lazily, I considered the woody vine growing before my front porch as the "clematis," not really caring which of the 400 species it might be.
     But when I paused, admiring its particularly lusty bloomage this week, I decided to pin down its exact variety. So I plugged it into Google Image, and, after an initial scare that it might be a Confederate Jasmine Vine ("the past isn't history, it isn't even past...") decided it had to be either a Virginia Bower or a Sweet Southern Clematis.
     My initial inclination was to pull for the former, as my son is a loyal Wahoo alumni. And while the flowers look almost exactly the same, the Sweet Southern is considered invasive, because the seeds get everywhere, though they're so similar it seems almost a silly distinction.    
     The difference being the leaves. Serated = Virginia Bower = good. And smooth = Sweet Southern = bad.  Of course I have the bad variety, though it's been there for years, doesn't seem to be spreading and while I cut it back every fall, I'm not about to dig it out. Let the Invasive Species police come get me.
     I was more interested in the literary ramifications of "clematis," which comes to us unchanged from ancient Greek, κληματίς, meaning "a climbing plant." My assumption was that pickings would be slim — my Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" has no entry for "clematis" ("rose" has 79).        Plug "rose" into the Poetry Foundation web site and you get over 10,000 results. Plus "clematis" in and you get 63, and not all of those actually contain the word.
      It is in Robert Frost's "The Wood-Pile," where he comes upon a neglected store of firewood, set aside by someone long ago, Clematis are part of nature reclaiming its property"

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

In a more recent poem, "America," German-born Aria Aber is trying to adjust herself to a "country of cowboys and fame" that tells her, "to keep quiet about certain things." And that was four years ago. To her:

I feared what had happened in your forest, the words that pursued the soft silk of spiders
The verbs were naturalize, charge, reside
The nouns were clematis, alien, hibiscus

     She's at Stanford now, so I hope feels more sanguine about the place.

     The classics never let us down. The word's Greek origin made me suspect I'd find it there, and I wasn't disappointed. Pliny the Elder — who we saw being killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius after saying, famously but incorrectly, in his case, "Fortune favors the brave," gives the flower an in-depth consideration in his "Natural History."

     He finds the leaves are good for cleansing leprous sores, and the seeds cure constipation. The Greeks, he notes, eat the leaves as a vegetable, with oil and salt.

   I was just ready to wrap this up, and call it a day, when I decided to do the Full Boy Scout Try, and check Shakespeare for clematis. Coming immediately upon this piece, written exactly two years ago. 

    Two few things stand out — first, the author, delving into clematis in a fashion identical to my own, comes up with material entirely different from what I found, including the plant that inspired it. 

     And second, I am the author. 

    Which is vaguely terrifying. Usually I snap to recall something I wrote 40 years ago. Yet I could plunge into clematis without a shiver of reluctant that I afflicted you with the topic a scant 735 days ago. But also comforting in that, given the entirely different result, I can still post this. Answer me honestly: how many of you began this piece and thought, "Didn't we read about clematis in 2023?"