Vitis. SAPINDACE^. |qc 



Order XXVIII. VITACE^. 



Woody plants, mostly climbing by tendrils, with a watery more or less acid juice, 

 branchlets articulated and often thickened at the nodes, usually palniately veined or 

 lobed or compound alternate leaves, panicled cymose or thyrsoid inflorescence, small 

 greenish or whitish flowers, and a baccate fruit ; distinguished from the related 

 orders by a minute truncate or 4 - 5-toothed calyx, caducous or early deciduous 

 petals valvate in the bud, and the stamens (as in Rhamnacece) of the same number 

 as these (4 or 5) and opposite them. — Flowers very commonly polygamous or dioe- 

 cious. Style short or conical : stigma depressed, hardly lobed. Ovules in pairs or 

 solitary in the cells of the ovary, erect, anatropous. Seeds with a thick and bony 

 coat. Embryo minute in cartilaginous albumen. Stipules sometimes manifest. 



About 250 species, in 3 or 4 genera, the principal one being the typical genus. 



1. VITIS, Tourn. Grape. 

 Calyx very short or small ; the border often obsolete, and the tube filled with the 

 fleshy disk, which bears the 4 or 5 thick caducous petals and the distinct stamens, 

 and in which the base of the ovary is commonly immersed. Ovary 2-celled : ovules 

 and usually the seeds a pair in each cell. — Tendrils and flower-clusters opposite the 

 leaves ; the former almost always at least once forked. 



In true Grapes the Eastern United States are richer in species than any other part of the world, 

 having 7 or 8 species, four of which have given rise to valuable or promising cultivated varieties. 

 The Californian species is unpromising. 



V. yiNiFERA, Linn., the Vine of the Old World, however, flourishes in California much better 

 than in any other of the United States, and some varieties liave long been in cultivation. 



1. V. Californica, Benth. Leaves tomentose or canescent, especially beneath, 

 about 3 inches in diaineter, round-cordate with a deep and narrow sinus, obtuse, 

 rather coarsely serrate and often somewhat 3-lobed : fruit 4 lines in diameter, in 

 rather large clusters, purple, covered with bloom: seed broad. — Bot. Sulph. 10; 

 Engelm. in Am. Naturalist, i. 321 & ix. 269. 



Along streams, from San Diego northward to Russian River and the Sacramento Valley. The 

 flavor of the fruit is rather pleasant ; its value for cultivation has not been tested. The Indians 

 of the Sacramento Valley call it Vaumec. 



V. Arizonica, Engelm., Am. Naturalist, ix. 269, is an allied species of Arizona and S. Utah, 

 and may be looked for in San Bernardino Co. The leaves are smaller, floccose-tomentose at first, 

 at length glabrous and shining, the sinus broader, the lobes and teeth much more acute ; fruit 

 small, in smaU clusters, said to be quite luscious. It should be tested under cultivation. 



Order XXIX. SAPINDACE^. 



Trees, shrubs, or sometimes herbs, mostly with compountl or lobed leaves, usu- 

 ally with unsymmetrical or irregular flowers and ovules few but seldom solitary ; 

 the order (mainly tropical) nearly impossible to define as a whole, and of which our 

 few representatives belong to almost as many suborders as genera : these more use- 

 fully characterized under the suborders. 



Suborder I. SAPmDACE^E proper. 



Flowers polygamous, irregular or unsymmetrical ; tlie stamens more numerous 

 than the petals, seldom twice as many. Seeds without albumen. Stipides none. 



