My tangutica blooms all season long and also has large silky seedheads. The flowers are fairly small in comparison to the amount of foliage, but there are always lots of flowers. I have had it for 7 years and it has never had an off season. I keep it in a thinned clay soil (crushed gravel added), not a rich one (for control) and never ever fertilize it. If you are getting all foliage, the soil may be too rich. This one, unlike all my other clems, simply doesn't need it. It might be different in sandy soil, but here with my dense, wet, and nutrient rich soil I need to keep it lean & mean to bloom, somewhat like a wisteria, I believe.

I had a very overgrown mature C. tangutica, I cut mine back to the ground this spring, two truckloads to the dump in fact. It is very vigorously growing back and I am trying to contain it in it's alloted space. I have some flowers this year but not loaded as it has been in previous years, it's putting most of it's energy into new growth rather than flowers, next year it won't be cut back as severely, so I'm sure it will be back to flowering it's head off. I would think your clematis is behaving the same way.

A......

All tanguticas are type III hard prune clematis. Cutting them back hard each year in late winter/early spring should have no effect on their blooming. Clematis in general like loads of water so if you, like I, live in an area where this summer has been unusually dry, then they may be sulking for that reason.

Another reason clematis might have loads of vegetative growth and no flower is that you are providing too much high nitrogen fertilizers. Use a slow release fertilizer with a higher phosphorus and see if that helps. Organic fertilizers, regular inorganic time released fertilizers with lower nitrogen values, alfalfa pellets, rose fertilizers, tomato fertilizers,etc. are all good fertilizers for clematis that will not stimulate loads of top growth and no flowers.

For me I had to remove three varieties of tanguticas from my garden due to their proclivity either to self sow like mad or sucker all over the place.

OK thanks. That's good information. It probably is a water issue - this blasted 2 year drought we've been in. The only fertilizer these plants have received would have come via compost. I've never used any other kind. Would also hate to see what would happen if I did fertilize them. The foliage is beautiful, but my Lord there is a lot of it.

K

All my Clematis seem to like lime, along with light doses of of the pelleted fertilizer. Mine is 12-12-12, so not heavy in any direction.

They just seem to like a handful of powdered lime in spring, always do better if I remember to add that.

I prune mine pretty hard in spring, down to about 4ft high. I try to do it early, before leafing out so the birds are not nesting in it. I think they bloom pretty well, but I do water. I have had them in both gravely soil and damp, nice garden dirt. Plants did equally well for me in both.

I do like the little yellow bells. One had closed, bell-shape flowers, petals tight edges together. While the other one had the bells open more widely, but not flattened out, or recurved back. The fluffy heads are much more attractive than some other Clematis. Just wild, long hair, like Dr. Suess' book with Thing 1 and Thing II.

Just thought I would do an update. We had a solid week of rain in August and now this plant is full of flowers. I guess water is the answer.

Kevin

Send some of that rain this way. I can't remember the last time it rained.