Hi Guys! This was in 2015. I have unfortunately not been able to travel much since. At least not that area. After some great info on this thread, one of the many emails I received was from a lady on the Fl/Ga line area. She actually has one of these in her backyard! It was beautiful from her photo. After all this time and research, I am thinking the micro climate thing for sure. I do not see any other possibilities. Most of the email I received, came from people where you would expect this tree to be. One from this sweet lady that had brought a tree with her when she moved from MEXICO to the US. She is now older and that tree is the best looking one I have ever seen a photo of. Of course she lives in Fl. That is all that I have for now. Thank you for your interest! :-)

Thanks! My cemetery style plantings are the result of making use of opportunities to acquire trees and shrubs with no predetermined plan. :-) But I think I'm achieving what I want overall even though it caused me to move a couple of the plantings. Thanks for the pruning advice. The bloom looked more developed a couple days before I dug it out. It's hard to plan with so few large trees to work with. I located the Annabelle out away from the house because if I would've put it in the river rock border in the front, that generally only gets a few hours of early morning then a few before sunset and I wanted to make sure it had enough sun to bloom profusely. Our hot season is short up here and hot spells along with hot nights are not frequent. I don't mind watering as it's part of living where the soil is sand with silt and a few percent of clay in various areas. It's just a 'yard size' by most standards. Here is where the Annabelle is located east side of the driveway. The trees are on the North side so even when the increase in size there should still be sun albeit they will give morning and afternoon shadows someday. The summer sun rises above the maroon house in the upper left side of the picture. Almost directly in the northeast.

It might show as present in this area - BUT I’ve never seen it around here and it has never been in the nearby ‘forest’ wild area where DH goes birding a lot, especially in migration seasons. But if it’s here now, I’ve go to deal with it - and I’m not sure how to separate it out of the mass of other, desirable clematises there.... We will be cutting them all down this week to try to at least keep it from seeding around. Any other suggestions?

I would hazard a guess that it is a native Veronica species. Perhaps this one: Maryland Biodiversity Project - Common Speedwell (Veronica officinalis) Veronicas can be very pretty and providing it isn't conflicting with other plants in your yard I would personally leave it alone. I think yours has flower buds so you'll be able to see pretty soon if the id is close. Even if the id is wrong it seems to be an attractive ground cover.