A graceful plate of airy, feathery flowers: the creamy tangles of Traveller's Joy (Clematis vitalba), known in autumn as 'old man's beard', shown with the nodding Alpine, Lesser and Yellow Meadow Rues (Thalictrum spp.), whose blooms are little more than soft puffs of stamens. From Anne Pratt's (1806–1893) The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain (Frederick Warne & Co., London, c.1855–1870s), chromolithographed by William Dickes.
Traveller's Joy is Britain's only native clematis, scrambling over chalk hedgerows and smothering them in silvery seed-plumes that catch the low winter sun. The meadow rues belong to the same buttercup family but have dispensed with petals altogether, relying on drifts of colourful stamens to draw pollinators.
Original antique chromolithograph, not a reproduction. Professionally matted in an ivory 10 x 12 in mat with a 6 x 8.5 in window, ready to slip straight into a standard 10 x 12 frame.
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