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Montana Field Guide

Montana Field Guides

Purple Clematis - Clematis occidentalis
Other Names:  Clematis columbiana [misapplied]

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Native Species

Global Rank: G5
State Rank: S4S5
(see State Rank Reason below)
C-value:


Agency Status
USFWS:
USFS:
BLM:


 

External Links

State Rank Reason (see State Rank above)
Common and widespread in western and central Montana.
 
General Description
Stems limber, to 2 m long, often climbing. Leaf blades sparsely long-hairy, divided into 3 cordate-lanceolate leaflets, 2–7 cm long with obscurely toothed margins. Flowers bell-shaped, perfect, nodding, solitary from leaf nodes; sepals blue, 2–5 cm long. Achene beaks 2–5 cm long (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Species Range
Montana Range Range Descriptions

Native
 


Range Comments
BC to NB south to OR, UT, CO, and OH (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Observations in Montana Natural Heritage Program Database
Number of Observations: 383

(Click on the following maps and charts to see full sized version) Map Help and Descriptions
Relative Density

Recency

 

(Observations spanning multiple months or years are excluded from time charts)



Habitat
Open to closed forest, thickets, often along streams, occasionally on talus; valleys, montane, occasionally higher (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Ecology
POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus vagans, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, and Bombus impatiens (Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010).


References
  • Literature Cited AboveLegend:   View Online Publication
    • Colla, S.R. and S. Dumesh. 2010. The bumble bees of southern Ontario: notes on natural history and distribution. Journal of the Entomological Society of Ontario 141:39-68.
    • Lesica, P., M.T. Lavin, and P.F. Stickney. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. Fort Worth, TX: BRIT Press. viii + 771 p.
    • Thorp, R.W., D.S. Horning, and L.L. Dunning. 1983. Bumble bees and cuckoo bumble bees of California (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Bulletin of the California Insect Survey 23:1-79.
  • Additional ReferencesLegend:   View Online Publication
    Do you know of a citation we're missing?
    • Culver, D.R. 1994. Floristic analysis of the Centennial Region, Montana. M.Sc. Thesis. Montana State University, Bozeman. 199 pp.
    • Jones, W. W. 1901. Preliminary flora of Gallatin County. M.S. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State College. 78 pp.
    • King, C. R. 1953. The Ranunculaceae of Montana. M.S. Thesis, Bozeman, MT: Montana State College. 82 p.
    • Lesica, P., M.T. Lavin, and P.F. Stickney. 2022. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants, Second Edition. Fort Worth, TX: BRIT Press. viii + 779 p.
    • Simanonok, M. 2018. Plant-pollinator network assembly after wildfire. Ph.D. Dissertation. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 123 p.
  • Web Search Engines for Articles on "Purple Clematis"
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Citation for data on this website:
Purple Clematis — Clematis occidentalis.  Montana Field Guide.  .  Retrieved on , from