Dactylicapnos scandens is a vigorous twiner native to the woodlands and scrubby hillsides of China, where it scrambles through neighboring vegetation in search of light. The cultivar Athens Yellow brings a particular warmth to the garden, its pendant flowers glowing a rich, clear gold against delicate, fern-cut foliage that would be worth growing for the leaves alone. It blooms with unusual generosity for the season, beginning in midsummer and sustaining the display right through to frost.

In practice, it asks for cool roots and open sun above — a shaded base with its head in light, much like a clematis. Rich, evenly moist soil keeps it at its best. In colder regions it behaves as an annual, dying back cleanly to the ground each winter, though in zones 7 to 10 it re-emerges from its roots come spring. Give it a trellis, a fence, or a sturdy shrub to climb, and it repays the support with season-long color during a moment in the calendar when such things are genuinely hard to come by.