Climbing or trailing woody vines, rarely shrubby, mostly with tendrils. Leaves simple, usually palmately lobed or dentate. Stipules mainly small, caducous. Flowers mostly dioecious, or polygamo-dioecious, rarely perfect. Petals hypogynous or perigynous, coherent in a cap and deciduous without expanding. Ovary 2-celled, rarely 3-4-celled; style very short, conic; ovules 2 in each cavity. Berry globose or ovoid, few-seeded, pulpy, edible in most species. [The ancient Latin name.]

About 50 species, natives of warm and temperate regions. In addition to the following, some 10 or 15 others occur in the southern and western United States. Type species: Vitis vinifera L.

Leaves woolly beneath; twigs woolly or hairy. *

Pubescence rusty-brown; berries large, musky.

1.

V. Labrusca.

Pubescence at length whitish; berries small, black, not musky

Berries with bloom; branches terete.

2.

V. aestivalis.

Berries without bloom; branches angular.

3.

V. cinerea.

Leaves glabrate, sometimes slightly pubescent when young.

Leaves bluish-white glaucous beneath.

4.

V. bicolor.

Leaves not glaucous beneath.

Leaves 3-7-lobed; lobes acute or acuminate.

Lobes and sinuses acute; berries with bloom.

5.

V. vulpina.

Lobes long-acuminate; sinuses rounded; berries without bloom.

6.

V. palmata.

Leaves sharply dentate, scarcely lobed.

Bark loose; pith interrupted by the solid nodes.

High-climbing; leaves large; berries sour.

7.

V. cordifolia.

Low; leaves small; berries sweet.

8.

V. rupestris.

Bark close; pith continuous through the nodes. Genus Muscadinia Small.

9.

V. rotundifolia.

1 Vitis Tourn L Sp Pl 202 1753 1172

1. Vitis Labrùsca L. Northern Fox- Or Plum-Grape. Wild Vine

Fig. 2830

Vitis Labrusca L. Sp. Pl. 203. 1753.

Climbing or trailing, often ascending high trees, sometimes forming a stem a foot in diameter or more, the young twigs, forked tendrils, petioles and lower surfaces of the leaves densely rusty-pubescent, especially when young. Bark loose and separating in strips; nodes solid, interrupting the pith; leaves large, each opposite a forked tendril or a flower cluster, varying from merely dentate to deeply lobed with rounded sinuses; fertile flowers in compact panicles, the sterile looser; berries few, brownish-purple or yellowish, about 9" in diameter, strongly musky; seeds 3-6, about 4" long; raphe narrow.

Thickets, Vermont to Indiana, New York, Georgia and Tennessee. Recorded from Minnesota. The cultivated isabella, concord and catawba grapes have been derived from this species. Ascends to 2100 ft. in Virginia. May-June. Fruit ripe Aug.-Sept.