Old Man's Beard

Old Man's Beard. (Clematis vitalba)
These dainty flowers hide the true nature of this rampant vine. It's one of the key weeds in the Marlborough / Nelson Conservancy, and is notorious for smoothing native bush and anything else in its path. It is resistant to most weed killers, and if a cut piece of the vine, makes contact with the ground, it can grow roots and keep on growing. I think that painting on undiluted "Round-up" to a cut stem is about the only way to kill it. This makes for very time consuming and back breaking work. The other alternative is just pulling out any plant that you find.
The seed-heads are also very dainty and get blown around by the wind. Hence the easy spread of this weed, plus being spread by earth moving equipment. At present there are more seed-heads to be seen than flowers, so I had to do the flowers first. I will try and get a photo of the seed-heads soon, before they all drift away.
I have a beautiful photograph taken of my grandmother on her wedding day in March 1915, she is sitting with her wedding bouquet on her lap. It had a few lillies in the centre with some daisies and surrounded by these lovely dainty seed-heads and leaves. On looking closer and comparing it with some Old Man's Beard....... I suddenly realised it was the same! It makes for a wonderful wedding bouquet, but little would anyone realise back then how well this vine would grow and what a weed it would become.
Took the pups to town yesterday for their next lot of injections - the Other Half took us across to Portage to get our van, to go out in that. One car sick pup on the way out, and way home, plus on the way home Poppy decided it was time to play. Tried tying her up but she got her leg all tangled up, & she could get under my feet while I was driving, so another stop to let her off. And so it went on, and on......... Going back to Portage the 1 ½ hour drive turned into 2 hours. Thankfully, I wasn't driving all the way back home.
Today I rang the vet place, as they have a vet that comes into the Sounds. Guess what? I've got them booked in to see her for the next lot of injections. I'm NOT taking them to town again in a vehicle!
Had 65 mls of rain since sometime during the night. That's enough for now. The pups don't like the rain, and I was going to walk them over the the loader and boat trailer when it was time to put the boat up, but the rain stopped. That was going to my 'payback'!