Miss Bateman Clematis

I know this photo has appeared on here before but dusk really is the best time for the flowers as they literally glow out of the gloom.  This also shows up the green banding pretty well.

I should probably have started with this one as it was the first one out in the garden and featured in a post on the 1st May, but nobody who knows me would say organisation was my forte.  Miss Bateman is the only other white variety that we have.  It is described as being an early variety and they aren’t wrong.  This is not a Clematis that hangs about, all the blooms were out and over before any of the others were even considering cracking a bud.  Again it has all white sepals, but differs from Henryi with rather pretty purple red anthers and much smaller flowers.  You will often read that it is 'all-white' and I have literally just described it as this myself, but in reality it actually has a very pale green stripe down the centre of each sepal that is most visible when it first opens and quickly fades off, disappearing just as the heavens open and your perfect flowers are destroyed by a barrage of heavy rainfall that leave them brown and tatty.   I don’t know wether this is just our plant or a feature of the variety in general, but like me it appears to struggle with the concept of height.  In my experience, being climbers Clematis are pretty keen to make a break for the sky and like to put on a little height before getting into the real business of flowering, but our specimen hasn’t really bothered to get much taller than it was when we first bought it.  It has just about stretched itself out to reach the top of the fence.  It was however absolutely densely smothered in flowers, albeit briefly and only on the bottom half of the plant; blink and you missed it.  If longevity is your bag, this maybe isn’t the one to go for.  The anthers are really interesting though with each one looking like its been dipped in purple.  So to summarise a simple but pretty little number that is fast off the mark, but just hope it doesn't rain. 

My god is this flower tatty, unfortunately the torrential rain came before I could get round there with a camera but it shows the anther

I had no intention of appearing on here personally but I realised this is the only photo I have of Miss Bateman in situ.  This was not the purpose of the picture at the time, I was aiming for a blogger profile pic and Miss Bateman just snuck in there.  And yes those are the fat buds of another clematis.