NORTHERN FOX-GRAPE 



very cottony; nodes solid, interrupting the pith; tendrils 

 forked. 



Leaves. — Alternate, rusty-brown and woolly beneath, 

 cordate, rounded, palmately veined, varying from merely 

 dentate to deeply lobed with rounded sinuses; opposite 

 each leaf is a tendril or a flower cluster. 



Flowers. — Greenish, small, dioecious, or polygamo- 

 dicecious, borne in a compact cluster. 



Calyx. — Minute, obscurely five-toothed. 



Petals. — Five, cohering at the tips, and falling with- 

 out expanding. 



Stamens. — Five, alternate with five nectar-bearing 

 disks. 



Pistil. — Globular, two-celled, style short. 



Fruit. — Berries, few, two- thirds of an inch in diameter, 

 purplish black with a bluish bloom, tough skin and musky 

 flavor; seeds pyriform. 



The Northern Fox-Grape is the common wild Grape 

 of New England and eastern New York, and has a well- 

 merited claim upon our attention as the parent of the 

 Isabella, Concord, and Catawba — in fact, of most 

 of the American cultivated Grapes of the Northern 

 States. The vine is strong, robust, climbing high in 

 thickets and on trees; the young shoots are tawny 

 with much scurfy down; the leaves are large and 

 thick and broadly cordate-ovate; they vary consider- 

 ably as to lobes and margin, but underneath are densely 

 covered with a tawny, dun-colored or red-brown to- 

 mentum. This characteristic persists in many of the 

 cultivated varieties. 



The blossoms are both fertile and sterile upon the 

 same plant; the corolla never opens, the small green- 

 ish petals grow together at the tip and fall without 

 separating. The perfume of the blossoming Grape is 



III 



