Ampelopsis bodinieri (Lévl. & Vant.) Rehd.

A deciduous climbing vine up to 20 ft high; young shoots glabrous, purplish on the sunny side. Leaves roundish to triangular-ovate, three-lobed (often inconspicuously so), shallowly heart-shaped to truncate at the base, slenderly pointed, coarsely and triangularly toothed; 21⁄2 to 5 in. long, glabrous on both sides, but of a glittering green above and pale or rather glaucous beneath; stalk purplish, 11⁄2 to 3 in. long. Flowers crowded in a branching cluster at the end of a slender stalk 1 to 2 in. long. Fruits dark blue, flattened-globose, 1⁄5 in. wide.

Native of Hupeh and Szechwan, China; introduced by Wilson in 1900 to Veitch’s Coombe Wood nursery. It was put in commerce by them as “Vitis repens”. It is apparently one of the two plants once called “Vitis flexuosa wilsonii” but the charming little vine more generally grown under that name is a true Vitis, and correctly called V. flexuosa var. parvifolia. There is a vigorous plant of A. bodinieri on the vine pergola at Kew.