Additional taxonomic challenges within the C. reticulata Complex -- Thomas did an extremely thorough job studying this complex, but there are additional items that need to be investigated that surfaced in the final months of Thomas's research. First, a possible new species was discovered in south-central Alabama along the Tallapoosa and Alabama rivers but more research is needed on this entity. Secondly, more study of Clematis reticulata sensu stricto in Florida and south Georgia could be insightful. We found there to be considerable morphological variation between plants of the Florida Peninsula and northern Florida and Georgia but our study was unable to resolve any additional splits with our current data set.

Additional taxonomic challenges within the C. viorna Complex -- The C. viorna Complex contains substantially more variation than the reticulata complex. Additionally, we discovered what may be new species fairly late in our study that did not get as thorough a review as some of the taxa. For example, there is considerable variation in the Piedmont of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia that needs more study. There is also more need to study populations in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri where all of the populations there are new to science, but there is still much to tease apart among the present entities.

Updated study of Clematis fremontii -- With the discovery of eastern populations in Georgia and Tennessee and improvements in DNA technology, new study of species Clematis fremontii is needed to determine if the highly disjunct populations represent isolated populations of the same species or if there are multiple species.

Thorough study of the Clematis pitcheri Complex -- The species known as Clematis pitcheri is highly variable and harbors at least one new species (eastern populations). There are likely other new species within the western populations and much scrutiny is needed within Mexico, west Texas, and New Mexico to study variation in this species. Furthermore, work is needed to evaluate the limits of C. pitcheri compared to even farther western taxa such as C. bigelovii and C. palmeri. It seems that our work in Arizona and New Mexico suggests that the latter two might merit splitting into separate species instead of being lumped under C. bigelovii as they have been for many years.

Completion of Jesse's phylogenetic research will be critical to helping understand the evolution and biodiversity of Clematis subgenus Viorna. In particular, focused population-level genetic studies are needed to further examine genetic variation of certain rare species. Many of the new species we discovered in our work are rare and of conservation significance and their genetic structure should be evaluated to inform conservation efforts.