g6 THE GRAPES OF XEW YORK. 



" Stamens. Filaments five, subulate, erect, spreading, caducous, 

 anthers simple. 



" Pistil. Ovary egg-shaped, style none, stigma obtuse headed. 



" Pericarp. Berry nearly round, large, one cell. 



" Seeds. Five, plump, terminate cordate, base contracted, partially 

 divided into two cells." 



Linnaeus in his Species Plantanmi of 1753, gives seven species as 

 belonging to this genus, three of which are credited to America. One, how- 

 ever, Vitis arborea, is not classed among the grapes by present-day botanists. 



Marshall,' the first American botanist we have to consider, for neither 

 Tournefort nor Linnaeus had ever been on this continent, in his Arbustrnm 

 Americanum, 1785, describes the genus Vitis in terms so nearly identical 

 with those of Linnaeus as to lead one to suspect that it is merely a trans- 

 lation from the Genera Plantarum. Marshall gives five species. One of 

 these is certainly not a grape and one other is indeteiTninate. 



Thomas Walter,^ in his Flora Caroliniana, 1 788, gives a brief description 

 of the genus very similar to the foregoing but he also speaks of the masculine 

 and feminine forms of the flowers, a point that does not seem to have been 

 noticed by any botanist of an earlier date. He speaks of the corolla adhering 

 at the top and coming off as a cap, one of the distinguishing characters of 

 Vitis. This latter point had, however, been noted by Tournefort, and his 

 figures show that this is what he means when he speaks of the flower as 

 folding upward. Tournefort, however, seems to have been under the mis- 

 taken impression that Ampelopsis {Ampelopsis quhiquifolia Michx. is our 

 common American form) opens its flowers in the same way, as he includes 



' Humphrey Marshall was bom in the town of West Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 1721, of Quaker 

 parents. He was a cousin of John Bartram, their mothers being sisters. Like Bartram, he had few 

 opportunities for education, not going to school after he was twelve years of age. He was a stone- 

 mason by trade, studying botany in his leisure moments. In 1773 he started a botanic garden at 

 Marshallton. In 1785 he published Arbiistrum Atnericanum, TIte Anwrican Grove, or An Alfliabt-ti- 

 cal Catalog of Forest Trees and Shrubs, Natives of tlte American United Stales. This work had been 

 in preparation about five years previous to its publication. It is said to be the first botanical work of 

 a native American. Marshall died in 1801. 



^ But little is known of the life of Thomas Walter. He was a native of Hampshire. England, 

 and migrated to St. John's Parish, South Carolina, where he had a plantation on the Santee River. 

 Here he died in 1788 at about the age of forty-eight years. His only publication of note is the 

 Flora Caroliniana, published in the year of his death. He must have be«n in correspondence with 

 European botanists of that time as his herbarium is preserved in the British Museum. 



