WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

This thin-stemmed, erect to sprawling plant climbs into low bushes and over boulders. Note the nodding, leathery, reddish-purple, urn-shaped flowers and leaves with leaflets with oval lobes.

FLOWERS: May–August. Nodding, bell- to urn-shaped, 3/8–1 1/8-inches (1.5–3 cm) long; petal-like sepals thick, reddish to purple, hairy, with pointed tips curled back exposing whitish-yellow stamens; seed head a spherical, hairy, tail-like cluster (not feathery plumes).

LEAVES: Opposite. Blades compound with 7–11 leaflets, each 1-inch (25 mm) long and 5/8-inch (1.5 cm) wide or greater, with 2–5 lobes; surfaces without hairs.

HABITAT: Dry to moist sandy, gravelly soils, open forests and meadows, canyons, roadsides; pinyon-juniper, Gambel’s oak, ponderosa pine, Douglas fir.

ELEVATION: 5,400–8,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, NM.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 7 species of Clematis in NM, 3 with reddish-purple leatherflowers. The look-alike Hairy Leatherflower, C. hirsutissima, in much the same range, has linear to lance-shaped leaflets or lobes mostly less that 5/8-inch wide and slightly hairy below. Purple Leatherflower, C. pitcheri, has egg- to lance-shaped paired leaflets with prominent veins and seed heads without feathery tails.

NM COUNTIES: From north-central to southwestern New Mexico in mid-elevation habitats: Bernalillo, Chavez, Cibola, Colfax, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Lincoln, McKinley, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan, Sandoval, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance.