Traveller’s joy down memory lane

Blaid's Wood, Durham On the Downs the plant of 'goodly shew with feather-like tops' seemed to festoon every hedgerow

Feathery clouds of Clematis vitalba seeds, entangled in the briars and hazels in the corner of the field, shone in the glow of the winter sunset. Some know this plant as old man's beard but for me it will always be traveller's joy, the name given by the 17th-century herbalist John Gerard, who delighted in the way it "maketh in winter a goodly shew, covering the hedges white all over with his feather-like tops".

I have known this isolated specimen for 40 years and took a long detour to check that it was still flourishing. Traveller's joy has never reached this corner of north-east England unaided and in the few places where it grows it's an accidental introduction, or perhaps a deliberate planting by someone with a fondness for its scented flowers and bearded achenes.