Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Vitis vulpina L.
- Family: Grape (Vitaceae)
- Flowering: May-June
- Field Marks: This grape, which lacks cobwebby hairs on the leaves, usually has unlobed leaves.
- Habitat: Moist or dry soils in woods, thickets, floodplains, along streams, fencerows.
- Habit: Woody vine with tendrils.
- Stems: Climbing, round in cross-section, smooth, the branchlets green, gray, or brown; bark at maturity becoming flaky.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, coarsely toothed but rarely lobed, smooth or hairy on the lower surface, but the hairs not cobwebby, up to 6 inches long, often nearly as wide; leaf stalks smooth, rarely red.
- Flowers: Many, small, in panicles up to 6 inches long; some flowers with both stamens and pistils, others with one or the other, sometimes the two sexes on separate plants.
- Sepals: 5, united, green, very small.
- Petals: 5, free from each other, greenish yellow.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary superior.
- Fruits: Berries black, shiny, spherical or flattened, up to 1/2 inch in diameter, containing 1-2 seeds.
- Notes: The berries are sweet and edible.
Previous Species -- Muscadine Grape (Vitis rotundifolia)
Return to Species List -- Group 9
Next Species -- American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens)
