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Southern Wetland Flora

Field Office Guide to Plant Species

Carolina Coral-beads
Cocculus carolinus (L.) DC.

JPG -- Species Photo GIF -- Distribution Map

Family: Moonseed (Menispermaceae)
Flowering: June-August
Field Marks: This vine is recognized by its highly variable leaves and its bright red, spherical drupes.
Habitat: Moist or dry soils in fields, woodlands, fencerows, roadsides, and waste areas.
Habit: Somewhat woody vine climbing or scrambling over vegetation.
Stems: Herbaceous at first, becoming woody and sometimes nearly 1 inch in diameter, brown, smooth or hairy, minutely warty, several to many feet long.
Leaves: Alternate, simple, highly variable in shape, basically ovate, pointed or rounded at the tip, more or less heart-shaped at the base, without teeth but sometimes with shallow lobes, hairy, up to 5 inches long, often nearly as wide.
Flowers: Male and female flowers borne separately on different plants in panicles arising just above the axils of the leaves; panicles of male flowers up to 6 inches long; panicles of female flowers shorter.
Sepals: 6, in 2 groups of 3, free from each other, green, hairy, the outer 3 shorter than the inner 3, none of the sepals more than 1/10 inch long.
Petals: 6, free from each other, shorter than the inner sepals.
Stamens: 6.
Pistils: 6; ovaries superior.
Fruits: Drupes bright red, spherical, up to 1/3 inch in diameter; seeds bony, coiled and warty, resembling a snail.
Notes: This plant is often called snailseed.

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Page Last Modified: Thursday, 03-Aug-2006 11:39:25 EDT
Menlo Park, CA [caww54]