Vitis vulpina
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Vitis vulpina' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Other taxa in genus
- Vitis aestivalis
- Vitis amurensis
- Vitis bellula
- Vitis betulifolia
- Vitis californica
- Vitis cinerea
- Vitis coignetiae
- Vitis davidii
- Vitis × doaniana
- Vitis ficifolia
- Vitis flexuosa
- Vitis heyneana
- Vitis labrusca
- Vitis monticola
- Vitis mustangensis
- Vitis palmata
- Vitis piasezkii
- Vitis × pulchra
- Vitis riparia
- Vitis romanetii
- Vitis rotundifolia
- Vitis rupestris
- Vitis vinifera
- Vitis wilsoniae
A very vigorous vine, whose main stem in the wild is sometimes from 11⁄2 to 2 ft thick; young shoots smooth or only slightly hairy, a tendril missing from every third joint. Leaves thin, roundish ovate, with a heart-shaped base (the sinus pointed and narrow), 3 to 5 in. wide, rather more in length, slenderly pointed, coarsely and irregularly toothed, unlobed or sometimes obscurely three-lobed, glossy and glabrous above, glabrous or downy on the veins beneath; stalk often as long as the blade. Flowers in drooping panicles, 4 to 12 in. long. Berries globose, 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 in. in diameter, black.
Native of the eastern and southern United States; introduced in 1806. The berries are moderately well-flavoured after they have been touched with frost in America, harsh and acid before; in the form described from the Mississippi basin, previously segregated as var. foetida Engelm. (now synonymised with the species), they have a pungent, foetid odour.
Confusion has arisen in the past by the use of the name V. vulpina for V. riparia.