26 THE GR.\PES OF NEW YORK. 



CHAPTER U 



AMERICAN GRAPES 



The grape is preeminently a North American plant. The genus Vitis is 

 a large one, from thirty to fifty species being distinguished for the world; 

 more than half of these are found on this continent. But few other plants 

 in America, or in the world, inhabit such varied and such extended areas. In 

 North America wild grapes aljound on the warm, dry soils of New Bnms- 

 wick and New England, about the Great Lakes in Canada and in the United 

 States, and on the fertile river banks and in the valleys, rich woodlands 

 and thickets of the eastern and southern States. They thrive in the dry 

 woods, sandy sea-plains, and reef-keys of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida 

 where the vines of the Scuppemong often run more than a hundred feet 

 over trees and shrubs, rioting in natural luxuriance. They flourish in the 

 mountains and limestone hills of the Virginias, Tennessee and Kentucky. 

 They are not so common in the West, yet found in almost all parts of Mis- 

 souri and Arkansas, and from North Dakota through Kansas to southern 

 Texas. Some wild grape is found in each of the Rocky Mountain States on 

 plain or mountain, or in river chasm or dr}- canon. Several species are 

 found in New Mexico, Arizona and California, where if they did not furnish 

 the Spanish padres of Santa Fe and San Diego with fruit for wine, they 

 suggested to them the planting of the first successful vineyards in the 

 United States. 



How did the grape spread from the Carolinas to California and from 

 subtropical Mexico to the barren plains of Central Canada? Why divide 

 into its manifold forms in the distriluition? These questions are of practical 

 import to the grape-grower and Ijreeder who seeks to improve this fruit. 

 The knowledge of the distribution and evolution of plants obtained in the 

 last half century is so complete that these questions present few difficulties 

 to the naturalist of today. In answering them no one would now hold that 

 the numerous species and their sub-divisions were created separately for 

 the regions in which they grow. All would take the ground that the differ- 

 ent wild forms come from one ancestral species. We can waive the question 

 as to what the original species was and as to where it first grew. 



It is certain that grapes have not been distributed over North America 



