In a Vase, on Monday – Smallish

Chris Mousseau

Today’s vase of cut flowers started by Cathy, at Rambling in the Garden, including a beautiful Clematis flower in a vase she featured several weeks ago; the idea continued to grow with a comment from a blogging colleague in Texas who talked about a native Texan Clematis – Texensis of course – and how she was looking forward to seeing my C. texensis – ‘Gravetye Beauty’ – when it was in bloom. It came to fruition with growing conditions perfect this year, and my Clematis tutoir is now covered in both the red C. texensis and deep violet C. viticella ‘Etoile Violet’ (I think!).

These are small flowered Clematis and I wanted to add a few other small flowers that would complement the deep purple and red. I snipped a stem of Dahlia ‘Neon Flare,’ a new-to-me single Dahlia this year that has lovely purple leaves and petals, which also have an intriguing orange streak, perhaps the ‘flare’ in its name. To soften the look there’s a single pink snapdragon plus bronze fennel fronds, and for shape and texture five drumstick Allium – A. sphaerocephalon.

Have a lovely week everyone!

18 Comments

  1. Super pretty color combo! Snapdragon must be the most fun flower in existence. (I bought a small 6-pack of ‘Rocket Mix’ & they have grown and branched out so well).

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  2. It’s really fun to see these clematis varieties. Tutoir was a new word for me, so I went looking for a definition. All I got in the responses was ‘tutor,’ which left me thinking Google and DuckDuckGo were stupid. Finally, when the only place I found the word used was another of your posts, I finally realized I might have chosen the wrong language. Sure enough: tutoir is French for ‘tutor.’ So, is a tutoir a ‘tutor’ for plants: a place where they can be trained to develop in certain ways?

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    1. Yes, it’s a French term for a garden structure…I likely should be spelling it tuteur…if you say it with a French accent, rolling the r at the back of your throat, it sounds quite intriguing, I think!

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  6. Because the garish hybrid Clematis do not perform well here, cultivars of Clematis texensis have been recommended. Other alternatives are not very colorful, and bloom with even smaller flowers. I would need to find it online though, since Clematis texensis is not available from nurseries, . . . although they garish hybrid sorts are. I would have no problem trying a cultivar of Clematis texensis, since I have always liked it in pictures anyway. Does bronze fennel produce distended bases that are comparable to common fennel? It had been a fad here, but I know of no one who grew it as a vegetable.

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    1. Garish…😆😆😆…do you have C. viticella’s?
      No, the bronze fennel base doesn’t get large and round, in my garden anyway (where this one plants jas now been growing for three years) but I’m told it’s still edible, and the foliage has the familiar licorice smell.

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      1. I do not know what the garish Clematis are because I do not look at their labels. I am not interested in purchasing any. The few that I have gotten acquainted with, such as the two that were in our landscapes, are known by their cultivar names, without their species names, anyway. Most are hybrids, and so-called ‘nurserymen’ do not care about proper nomenclature anymore. I get the same description of bronze fennel, but have never seen it make a distended base. I am not so keen on that color. It looks like smokey topaz windows that were trendy in the 1970s.

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  8. Well well, C texensis originates from Texas? It never even occurred to ne, so thanks for enhancing my knowledge! And what is a ‘tutoir’? (just seen your answer to tgat – thanks!) I am very fond of both the clematis you have used in your vase today, and like your chosen enhancements too – the dahlia with the streak is intruiguing, especially if it consistently has a random streak. By the way, my Gravetye Beauty always starts flowering much later than all my others and is probably still a month away from doing so

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