Magazine  (1877)  Page(s) 261.  
 
Cl. lan. violacea. — Flor. Mag., 1876, t. 217.

Magazine  (Jul 1876)  Page(s) tab 217.  
 
Plate 217.
CLEMATIS LANUGINOSA VIOLACEA.
The Clematis is one of the most beautiful and, at the same time, one of the most modern of all garden flowers. The oldest hybrid was raised barely thirty years ago, and now we have them by the hundred, and improvements in form and colour are taking place every year. The beautiful variety we have selected for figuring was shown by Mr. Noble, of Bagshot, for the first time in April last, and was awarded a first-class certificate by the Floral Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society as a most desirable decorative plant, either for pot-culture or as an out-door plant for covering rock-work, rooteries, or trellises in sheltered situations, where the great flowers will not be injured by rough winds or heavy rains. The individual blooms of this variety (which is one of the most attractive of all the varieties belonging to this section of the genus) vary in size, but are rarely less than seven inches in diameter, the sepaline segments being of great substance.
In addition to this fine variety, Mr. Noble has also received certificates this year for C. " President," another effective dark purplish variety (the result of an attempt to gain an early-flowered form of the C. Jackmanii type), and C. Proteus, a rosy purple double or semi-double flower, which is likely to be the forerunner of a very useful race. At the last meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society Mr. Noble exhibited a very pale lilac or nearly white variety of C. Jackmanii, and this we consider is a welcome addition to the group to which it belongs, as from it a pure white seedling will doubtless soon be obtained, a result hitherto hoped for in vain. What is now wanted is a race of hybrids between C. Jackmanii or C. lanuginosa and the lovely old C. montana, which is one of the hardiest, earliest, and most floriferous of all the species now grown in our gardens. It seems singular that such graceful plants as Clematis should be so rarely used in our gardens to produce pleasing landscape or gardenesque effects ; for it cannot but be allowed that they are capable of adding more beauty to the garden than almost any other climbing plant, if we except the Rose ; and these two plants and fresh green Ivy might be associated in a hundred different ways, either in beds or borders, or on walls, tree-trunks, trellises, or over bowers and verandahs, where their great delicate- tinted flowers could be viewed to the best advantage.