Help! Tangled clematis

13 years ago

My mother has a beautiful clematis growing by her mailbox. She has had it for a few years maybe four or five. Last winter she had bought a wonderful trellis for it, had the plant grow on it for it's growing season, then took the trellis down so that it would not be damaged over the winter. In the spring she had forgotten to put the trellis back up. By the time she decided to put it back up, he clematis had already started growing, entangling it's vines into a large ball. It was so unfortunate. I tried to save it by loosening so of the vines from the knot and attaching them to the trellis but it wasn't very effective. It grew more, entangling itself more, and produced very few of its breathtaking flowers. I managed to salvage some seeds to try to grow new plants even though it will be very difficult and they may not even look relative to my mother's clematis. Anyways now my mother wants to prune her big ball of clematis to make it somewhat visually attractive and also so that it might have a chance in the spring. She doesn't know the species of clematis nor what class/ when it flowers (we didn't really pay attention to when it flowered because it was such a disgrace D:). It is very hard to identify any buds and the new and old vines look and feel very similar. So what I guess I'm fruit to ask you forum is that if my mother were to prune the clematis basically to the ground, removing the ball of vines will her plant come back in the spring? Will it grow new shoots from the root ball/ crown? Thank you so much. It is so unfortunate I did not create an account on here before this had all happened. This could have all been avoided/ fixed from the start before now. Thanks again :)

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Comments (3)

judith5bmontreal
13 years ago
By all means prune it back...it will spring back even stronger in the spring. Usually in our zone the advice is to prune back in very early spring, but I have pruned a few well-established clematis back late in the fall with no ill effects. If your clematis is a type III (flowers on new growth)it should be cut back to 6-12 inches from the ground anyway. If it's a type II (flowers on old AND then new growth), then you will lose the early (May) flowers, and just get blooms in late summer. Type I (flowers only on old growth from last year) you'll have to wait until the next spring to see flowers.
It's really amazing how fast clematis can grow once spring arrives. I also find it hard to keep ahead of mine...you have to get out there every day if you want to train in any way. The best thing would be a trellis you could leave in place all winter - a necessity if your plant turns out to be type II or type I - since you want to save as much old wood as possible and leave them attached to the support over winter. They will then just require a little clean up of dead tips and re-attaching stray vines in the spring.

Hope this helps.

Judith
bbfan10
Original Author
13 years ago
Thank you so much Judith. We were very worried about this. It is a good idea to have a permanent trellis. I will let my mother know. It's reassuring to know that others other than us sometimes having trouble with keeping up wih clematis growth. I appreciate your speediness as well. thank you. Now I'm not so worried about losing the plant over the winter and am happy to know that it will indeed grow back healthier. Than you so much for the third time and enjoy the holidays :)
buyorsell888
13 years ago
Some Clematis grow too big too grow on a mailbox post even if you do prune them to the ground every year.

Pruning won't hurt it. Whack away. After your frosts have started so it won't put out new growth now.