98 THE EVOLUTION OP OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



Synopsis of the American Species of Grapes 



If America is a land of grapes, it will profit us to 

 make an inventory of such wild types as botanists 

 consider to be distinct enough to be called species. 

 This synopsis is reduced and adapted from the au- 

 thor's monograph of the Vitaceae in Gray's Synoptical 

 Flora, 1897 (Vol. i., Part L, Fascicle ii.). 



VITIS. The Vine. Grape-vine. A widespread genus in 

 the North Temperate zone, richest in species in North America. 

 The species undergo marked adaptations to local conditions, and 

 several of them hybridize freely, so that the study of them is 

 perplexing; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that the 

 foliage varies in character on different parts of the plant, and 

 herbarium material cannot properly represent the fruit. The 

 large viticultural interests of North America, outside of the hot- 

 houses and the Pacific Slope and Mexico, have been developed 

 within the century from the native species of grapes (chiefly 

 Vitis Labrusca and V. cestivalis), and their hybrids with the Old 

 World wine -grape (Vitis vinif era) . The last is almost exclusively 

 grown in California, and is sometimes inclined to be sponta- 

 neous. The genus naturally divides itself, in North America, 

 into two groups, the muscadines, and the true grapes. 



I. MUSCADINIA, the muscadines. Bark bearing prominent 

 lenticels, never shredding; nodes without diaphragms; tendrils 

 simple; flower-clusters small and not much elongated; berries 

 usually falling singly ; seeds oval or oblong, without a distinct 

 stipe-like beak. 



Vitis rotundifolia, Michx. (Muscadine, Southern Fox-grape, Bui- 

 lace or Bullit or Bull Grape.) Fig. 17, page 84. Vine with 

 hard, warty wood, running even sixty to one hundred feet over 

 bushes and trees, and in the shade often sending down forking 

 aerial roots: leaves rather small to medium (2 to 6 inches 

 long), dense in texture and glabrous both sides (sometimes 

 pubescent along the veins beneath), cordate-ovate and not 

 lobed, mostly with a prominent and sometimes an acuminate 



