Thank you to wermsrus-jacki@Flickr from Portland, Oregon, for sharing today's image (original image) via the BPotD Flickr Group Pool. Much appreciated!

Clematis 'Rooguchi' (sometimes misnamed 'Roguchi' or 'Rouguchi') is the result of a cross between Clematis integrifolia and Clematis reticulata (linked pages via Clematis on the Web). This deciduous lax climber is a relatively recent cultivar, having been raised in 1990 by Japanese clematis breeder, Kazuhige Ozawa. The British Clematis Society has featured it as a Clematis of the Month.

Conservation resource link: Wade Davis lectured at UBC on Wednesday, and I attended. He brought the audience's attention to the mining exploration occurring at the headwaters of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers in northern British Columbia, an area that has previously been proposed as a National Park. To get an idea of why, this National Geographic article by Davis contains a select quote: “When John Muir traveled the lower third of the Stikine in 1879, he called it a Yosemite a hundred miles (160 kilometers) long, and he counted some 300 glaciers along its tortuous course. It's a land where Canada could hide England, and the English would never find it”. Current news articles about the fight to preserve much of the area can be found on the Sacred Headwaters site: “BC natives seek to protect land, pristine rivers”, “Band finds it's not alone in fight for wilderness” and “Great-grandmother arrested for joining blockade to stop 'threat'”.