*254 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



Vitis palmata, Vahl. 



Vitis palmata, Vahl, has been cultivated in the Paris Botanic 

 Garden for one hundred years or more, and has thence found its 

 way into other European gardens without, as it seems 4 , attracting 

 the attention of botanists. On the banks of rivers in Illinois, 

 some eighty or ninety years ago, Michaux discovered this Vitis, 

 which he, with the very scanty herbarium specimens before him, 

 stowed away with his Vitis riparia, leaving, however, with it his 



original label : " Vitis rubra, abonde sur les rivieres aux Illinois," 

 but never even mentioning the name in his Flora. When, twenty- 

 six years ago, I studied Michaux's collections in the Jardin des 

 Plantes, I was struck with the peculiarity of the specimens, 

 especially with that which is preserved in the General Herba- 

 rium; 1 its seeds were so odd that I almost suspected a confusion. 

 In this country it seems to have remained quite unknown ; in 

 Torrey and Gray's Flora it is suggested that it might be a form 

 of V. aestivalis. Vahl's statement that it came from Virginia is, 

 of course, erroneous, but not more so than many other American 

 localities published in those, geographically, dark ages. 



Mr. H. Eggert has had the good fortune to re-discover this 

 species last fall, and collecting it again this summer, has furnished 

 observations and specimens which permit me to complete the 

 history of this long neglected plant. 



Vitis palmata, Vahl. A vigorous climber with red 

 branches (and often also red petioles), young shoots, angular and 

 ribbed, older ones losing the bark in large flakes ; diaphragms 

 rather thick ; stipules very short, rounded, early deciduous ; 

 leaves smooth, glabrous (or on the nerves beneath with short, 

 straight hairs), dull and rather dusky green, cordate with a broad 

 sinus, mostly deeply three- or sometimes five-lobed, lobes when 

 long, widest in the middle, contracted at base and mostly slen- 

 derly caudate-acuminate, with few coarse teeth ; flowering racemes 

 compound, long peduucled ; berries black without any bloom, 

 rather small (four to five lines in diameter) ; seeds large for the 

 size of the fruit, slightly notched on top, single, and then nearly 



1 1 may also say that in hunting through Michaux's Vitis, I came across a 

 ■well characterized specimen of V. rupestris, also preserved in that sheet of V. 

 riparia. As Michaux never botanized west of the Mississippi, where V. rwpestiris 

 is found from Missouri to Texas, it remained a question where he could have 

 obtained that specimen, which had no label attached to it, until a few years ago 

 Dr. Gattinger discovered the species on sand-bars in the Cumberland river near 

 Nashville, a region well explored by Michaux. 



