This is not the flower of the Virgin's Bower, it is what remains after the petals have fallen. The flower when in bloom does have a feathery pluming center, as if it had a full head of hair......But, as the season progresses the petals fall away and the hairiness grows. It is a clinging vine that has no tendrils. Darwin spent quite a bit of time studying how certain plants move with different stimulus. Some plants move with the sun, and some, like the Virgin's Bower, are sensitive to touch. He discovered if you rubbed a stick on one side of the leaf stock, it would start to move in that direction for the next few hours. If the leaf found, after reaching in that direction for a few hours that there was nothing to wrap its leaf stock around, it would return to its original position. It is a member of the Clematis family. It is also called Traveller's Joy because, as Neltje Blanchan puts it so amusingly...." Our Traveller's Joy, that flings out the right hand of good fellowship to every twig within reach, winds about the sapling in brotherly embrace, drapes a festoon of flowers from shrub to shrub, hooks even its sensitive leafstalks over any available support as it clambers and riots on its lovely way." I think that this fall display of the Virgin's Bower is more beautiful than the actual flower.
Where I found it : on the boarder of a sunny field
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