Old Man’s Beard – fluffy, grey fruits of Traveller’s-joy
AT this time of year, most wayside hedgerows have died down for the winter, so many are looking brown and bare. However, every now and again the bareness is relieved by an arrangement that looks like scum, froth, suds or hundreds of small lumps of lambs’ wool tossed onto the hedges.
On closer inspection, the arrangement turns out to be the profuse dome of fluffy, greyish-white fruits of Traveller’s-joy a wild Clematis and a climbing, woody member of the Buttercup family.
A very common plant, Traveller’s-joy grows best on lime-rich soils in southern counties and where it does occur it grows vigorously, seeds freely and is immediately identifiable by its unusual fruits that are so obvious at present. As the plant’s name states is appearance in the otherwise bare hedgerows is a joy to many travellers.
Traveller’s-joy is a climber with very long woody stems that droop down from the tops of the hedgerow to the grass verge. Thick and woody, these trailing stems can look like miniature jungle lianas. However, the woody stems are not strong enough to support themselves, so they twine around other plants and shrubs to enable the Clematis to climb.
Traveller’s-joy is not native to Ireland. Its natural range is from the south of England and Wales, through mainland Europe to North Africa and the Caucasus. Because of its attractiveness, it was introduced to Ireland as a garden shrub. lt did well here, so well in fact that it escaped from gardens and naturalised itself in the countryside.
Due to its origin as a garden escape, the plant is most often seen in hedgerows near houses or the remains of former dwellings. Lots of Clematis varieties are grown in gardens but Traveller’s-joy appears to be the only one that has managed to survive in the wider countryside.
The fragrant flowers of Traveller’s-joy appear between July and September. They are creamy white in colour and produce cluster of fruits each crowned with a long, off-white, feathery plume known as Old Man’s Beard. It is the prolusion of these fluffy white heads that gives the climber its current distinctive appearance.
The Santa Clause beard of feathery plumes is the greatly elongated remains of the flowers’ styles. They can remain in place long into the winter after the plants’ seeds have been dispersed by the wind if they haven’t been eaten by finches, especially Goldfinches, that pick them from the fluffy depths of the Old Man’s Beard.