Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Cissus incisa (Nutt.) Des Moul.
- Family: Grape (Vitaceae)
- Flowering: May-July
- Field Marks: This vine differs from all other members of the grape family by having leaves sometimes divided into 3 leaflets and its 4-parted flowers.
- Habitat: Wet to dry soils in open woodlands to salt marshes.
- Habit: Slightly woody vine scrambling, sprawling, or climbing, with tuberous thickened roots.
- Stems: Somewhat woody or sometimes rather succulent, warty and tight-barked.
- Leaves: Alternate, fleshy thickened and succulent, deeply 3-lobed or divided into 3 leaflets, the leaflets ovate to obovate, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, coarsely toothed or even lobed, smooth, up to 3 inches long.
- Flowers: Several in apparently compound umbels, some of the flowers male only, some female only, some bisexual, but all types on the same plant.
- Sepals: 4, green, united below, with very small, rounded lobes.
- Petals: 4, greenish white, free from each other.
- Stamens: 4.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, surrounded by a conspicuous 4-lobed disk.
- Fruits: Berries ovoid to obovoid, black, up to 1/2 inch long, usually dryish, containing 1 or 2 triangular seeds.
- Notes: This vine is sometimes called marine ivy.
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