Birth flower for April 18
Clematis
Meaning: mental beauty, ingenuity
Clematis climbs by twisting its leaf stalks around anything nearby, and its wiry stems gave it the Chinese name 'iron-wire lotus'. Gardeners call it the queen of climbers. Many of today's big, showy hybrids trace back to Chinese and Japanese wild species, such as Japan's native kazaguruma ('pinwheel'), which reached Europe in the 19th century and were crossed into the dazzling range we know now.