C. marata, male flower
In November 2024 I was fortunate to travel from the UK to New Zealand, South Island, and to see Clematis marata in flower in the wild. My husband, Ken, and I hired a guide to take us to find it. Elspeth, our guide, knew we were coming and had done some research during the previous year. Elspeth took us to three locations, and we successfully found C. marata in flower at two of them. The first location was in in the stunning Ashburton Gorge in Central Otago, near Staveley and Mt Somers. From the road we climbed up on foot into a mix of pasture and bushes where we could see C. marata in flower. We moved from one clump of bushes to another and saw quite a lot of plants. The bushes were about 6 feet / 2 meters high max although it was difficult to tell the height when standing on a steep hill side! C. marata was generally flowering at the top of the bushes.
C. marata growing in bushes in the stunning Ashburton Gorge
C. marata, male flowers, Ashburton Gorge
C. marata is one of a small group of New Zealand species clematis which are all evergreen and dioecious (separate male and female) plants. A plant has either female or male flowers. The ones we saw in the Ashburton Gorge were all male. The flowers were yellow/cream, small, about 2.5 cm (generally less than 1 inch across), although many were not fully open. They grow either on their own or in clusters. Some of them had a slightly darker, reddish centre as in the first photo above. We moved onto the car park area of Lake Clearwater to see if we could find C. marata there, which we did, but the flowers were still buds and not yet open. Our final destination was the car park at the west side of the Mt Somers South Face Track. Scrambling up through the bushes bordering the road we found more C. marata including a number of plants with female flowers. You can see that the centre of the female flower is different to the males above. Our trip was complete!
C. marata, female flowers, Mt Somers
We had visited New Zealand in 2018. The results of that trip are documented in the Society’s Journal, Clematis International 2019. During the visit in 2018 we saw C. marata in flower at the Harris Scientific Reserve Kanuka Sanctuary, close to Ashburton and the main road through South Island, Route 1. These flowers were not the typical yellow/cream colour but a beigy brown.
C. marata, male flowers, Harris Scientific Reserve Kanuka Sanctuary
There will be a full report of our visit to New Zealand in 2024 in this year’s journal, Clematis International 2025.
Fiona Woolfenden