Clematis Armandii

Walking through Palo Alto streets, I smelt an intense, sweet fragrance. It came from a tall fence covered with white flowers. I felt that I, too, should have the beautiful white vine with the deep green foliage on the fence in my garden. I did not know the name, but one day, about two years ago,I was visiting Filoli Gardens and there I saw the vine for sale. One was not enough for me and I bought two. I planted them, one next to the north fence and one next to the south fence. While planting them I forgot to pay attention for the name, but now while keeping records of the life of my garden in a diary I searched and found the name "Clematis Armandii."
Clematis Armandii is named to honor the Vincentian priest Jean Pierre Armand David. He was also an avid Zoologist and Botanist. On a mission to China he collected hundreds of specimens of the many groups in the natural world. Many of the specimens were first discovered by him and many specimens were named after him. He is best known for discovering the giant Panda.
Read more about Armand David in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_David
and in
http://www.vincentians.org.au/Studies/ScottBDavid.pdf
I found out that the author George Bishop created a book about David Armand "Travels in Imperial China: The Exploration and Discoveries of Pere David.
I published the blog, called my sister Ora and we both looked at the photos while chatting. The conversation quickly sailed far away from the Clematis Armandii's photo. While we spoke about this and that, the photo displayed on the screen and we both suddenly noticed that the flowers have different numbers of petals. "Have a look at the left corner of the photo and you can see flowers with four, five and six petals." we both exclaimed.
There is few interesting facts about petals in wikipedia, under "Petal".
While searching the net, for "flowers with different numbers of petals," I found out that on many plants the number of petals is a Fibonacci number.
"Oh," I sighed deeply, "long ago I did study about Fibonacci numbers but today I do not think I can give you a lecture about the subject."
Still it is intriguing. I am planning to start reading about the subject at the site "Flower Pattern and Fibonacci Numbers
http://www.popmath.org.uk/rpamaths/rpamages/sunflower.html

Today, April 3, 2010 the flowers are gone. I can't take closeup photos of the flowers with 4, 5, 6, petals. Four and six are not Fibonacci numbers.
I'll have to wait for next year.