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Ranunculaceae family

Scarlet Leather Flower Clematis texensis

Native

Scarlet Leather Flower is a perennial vine native to the lower 48 states.

More about this plant

Clematis texensis, commonly called scarlet leather flower, is a climbing vine in the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae). It is native to the United States, where it is endemic to the Edwards Plateau of Texas. Its natural habitat is on rocky limestone cliffs and streamsides. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 10 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT) — Flower colour
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
Flower colour
Pink AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
In the garden
Vine / climber layer — Sits in the vine of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~6 caterpillar species

Clematis supports ~6 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Clematis in North America, including:

Alcathoe autumnalis · clearwing moth Alcathoe carolinensis · Clematis Borer Alcathoe caudata · Clematis Clearwing Moth Alcathoe pepsioides · clearwing moth Alcathoe verrugo · clearwing moth Calephelis nemesis · Fatal Metalmark
+ 8 more species →
Epinotia pulsatillana · leafroller moth Eupithecia maestosa · geometer (inchworm) moth Eupithecia misturata · geometer (inchworm) moth Eupithecia satyrata · Satyr Pug Eutrapela clemataria · Curve-Toothed Geometer Horisme intestinata · Brown Bark Carpet Hyphantria cunea · tiger moth Orgyia leucostigma · White-Marked Tussock Moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Flower colour Derived

McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.

Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.

McKenzie, P., Berardi, A.E., Hopkins, R. (2025). flower_color_phenology (MIT).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (17) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[09] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[11] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[13] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[15] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[16] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[17] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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