Traveller’s joy down memory lane

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.

When I first moved here from a childhood on the Sussex Downs, where it seemed to festoon every hedgerow, I really missed it, not least because it evoked memories of anxious journeys on freezing December nights.

The house where my grandparents lived in the 1960s was half a mile from the nearest street lamp, and the bus stop across the road stood in total darkness on winter evenings. So, five minutes before the bus was due, we waited at an upstairs window until we could see the vehicle’s lights as it threaded its way along the lanes between the fields.

Then we raced downstairs and stood with arm outstretched, shivering at the roadside, hoping the driver would see us. As the bus turned the corner its headlight beams would sweep along the downy clematis seed heads that clung to the hedge like clouds of smoke, before it drew to a halt and the doors opened to the light and warmth within.

As we peered out through the steamed–up windows the traveller’s joy in the hedge became indelibly associated with that feeling of relief at being safely aboard the last bus home.

And that’s why I planted it in our own hedge as soon as we had a garden. Botanical Latin binomials are accurate labels but colloquial names often have deeper personal resonances.