Three years ago, late in the morning, I got a phone call from my friend Diane, who was walking out on the gravel roads near her home, and though the fields all around were full of wheat and there were no other native plants there, alongside the road was a mature Sugar bowls plant in bloom. A road crew had just applied gravel to the road and graders were spreading it out, ripping up all vegetation on the sides of the road. She asked if I wanted to come out and try to save it. OF COURSE! Though normally, it is extremely bad form to dig up a mature native plant like this, this plant was getting dug up, one way or the other. Either left to compost in the drainage ditch, or maybe... it could be dug up and survive in my prairie. It came out in two chunks, a big one and a smaller one, and both lived, but there had been no blooms. Until this week. This is a beautiful plant with an enchanting bloom, which is an unusual clematis in that it doesn't produce vines.
