PlantFiles: Clematis
Clematis 'Blue Light'

I love this plant it took four years of sleeping before it got enought root to bloom, well worth the wait! What I'm finding is that there is a name conflict with this plant. The one that I got is lovely blue with the hairy lime green center but I've seen it listed in catalogs as just being very double lavender/blue. Not really sure what happened but the "Blue Lights" Vanso, that is offered in the catalogs now is not the "Blue Lights" that I got from Van Dyck's in June of 2003. Not sure who to ask what is what.

**UPDATE**...Well it's almost one year later. All but one of the blue ones died. That one however is coming back with a vengeance.Soil was good and watered like they said to. They started off good, great even. The pink ones went first.Saying the went quick would be an understatement. Most fragile plant I ever bought. Of the blue ones only 2 remained and one just died. Seems this plant likes having it's roots covered by rocks or some other similar covering. Winter this year was not bad at all so I'm a lil stumped. Had I known about the rock thing I would have done it to all of them. Mid May 2011 now and the remaining blue one goes to ground. Here's hoping. ~~~~ORIGINAL POST ---> ~~~~~~Ok... Got this plant from an online retailer..4 blue and 2 pink. Through no fault of theirs USPS took 10 days to get them here. On arrival they all appeared dead but I planted each one seperately and hoped for the best. To my surpise 1 blue and 1 pink TOOK OFF!! lol. Only 2 weeks old in 7-8hrs of northern nevada sun a day & I already had to re-plant them once into larger containers. The others have dead stems but it seems the roots are still healthy so going to wait it out and see. I saw these blooming at a local nursery and if I was to give them a negative at all it would be that they have no fragrance. Shame for such a lovely flower.

I have a new redwood picket fence going up along the front yard and I'm going to train them along it alternating colors. Can't speak of long term as they are still new but, with seeing how hardy these lil guys & gals are, I'm hoping for the best. So far in 2 weeks they've gone from 1/4in buds to 7in tall seedlings. This rapid growth seems to have subsided now giving way to a "thickening" of the whole plant. On another side note...the retailer has been excellent at getting me the replacements. All in all I'm quite happy with my "afterthought" plants .... 1 more week and they go to ground.

Bird

This is my very favorite clematis. It likes a lot more sun than most clematis. The flowers are HUGE. They last for several weeks, and even when they are done, the center petals hang on for another few days.
Even in my alkaline soil, they are very true blue.
There can be two flower forms of this, on the same plant. Sometimes they open single and sometimes double. The double blooms are the most showy.
If you can find some of this from Monrovia, buy it! They sell huge specimens with great root systems. I've purchased this from several places(Wayside, Lowes, and a garden center carrying Monrovia) and the Monrovia was by far the best, and largest one for the price.
The one from Wayside is growing painfully slowly, and the Lowes one is doing ok. The Monrovia ones are taking off and are a real joy.
My sister visited one year, and asked if they were fake. She said she'd never seen such large beautiful flowers, especially that color, that were not fake. :0)

This clematis is worth the extra effort. I planted it 4 years ago. Each year I would get just 1-3 small blossoms on it. This year I was going to dig it up and replace it with another clematis. It took off and I currently have 12 blooms with more on the way. (early July) Mine is not real blue, more of a lavender but very full and beautiful. I have many different kinds of clematis in my yard but this one is very special.

My blue light bloomed this year for the 1st time (It's maybe 2 years old). The spot where I planted it gets very little sun, so I had feared it would not bloom. This spring it produced dozens of large sky blue blooms that seemed to last forever. Then, much to my surprise, and despite my failure to remove the spent blooms, it continued to bloom off and on all summer long! I have dozens of clematis plants. None have bloomed so tirelessly as this one. Even in the hottest part of summer (and I live in the South US!) when no other clematis in my yard was even thinking of blooming, this plant seemed to always display a few blooms. And it's also quite lovely!

Container grown and bloomed the first year. Good color, the center takes a few days to fill out. This is photo of first day it opened.