Plant Name
Clematis orientalis L.
Botanical Info
It is a deciduous, sometimes suffruticose vine or scrambling shrub. The multiple stems may reach 8m in length and as much as 7 cm in thickness.
Geography:
Eurasia.Hot dry valleys, especially on rocks by rivers, and in scrub to 3000 metres. River banks, riparian forests, scrub gullies, slopes and sand depressions in semi-desert and desert zones.
Chemical Content
Plant contains alkaloids, tritepenic saponins : jungarosid B, (vitalbosid F), caulosapogenin , coumarins, flavonoids, a gamma lacton, rancicoulin.
Traditional Use and Activity
The plant is antiseptic and refrigerant. It is used as a gargle for ulcerated throats and also to treat dog bites.
Powder from roots in Central Asia uses at fractures of bones. In a fresh kind the ground grass in Tajikistan is used at dermal diseases, as counterpoison at punctures of snakes. Caulises were used for smoking at syphilitic lesions of nose in Kirghizia. Infusion of flowers and fruits in the form of lotions applied at osteomyelites.
Although no reports of toxicity have been seen for this species, some if not all members of this genus are mildly poisonous. The toxic principle is dissipated by heat or by drying.
Oriental virginsbower is planted as an ornamental and ground cover.