IX. 
PAPERS ON VITIS. 
I. NOTES ON THE GRAPE-VINES OF MISSOURL 
FromM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE St. Louis AcADEMY OF ScrENcE, Vol. I. 1860, 
Iv the Transactions of the Academy (p. 156 of this volume) Prof. Swallow has published [660] 
an interesting contribution on the adaptation of our State to the cultivation of the grape-vine. 
The article, abounding in valuable information, contains some inaccuracies, which, as the whole sub- 
ject is so very interesting and important, it may not be improper here to indicate. 
The grape-vines proper (gen. Vitis, sect. Vitis) indigenous to Missouri are Vitis estivalis and Vitis cordifolia, 
with their numberless varieties ; popularly speaking, they are distinguished as the Summer Grape and the Winter or 
also sometimes called Fox Grape. The former grows on uplands in open woods and thickets, is of smaller 
dimensions, has deeply lobed leaves with rounded sinuses of the lobes, covered when young with a rose-red down, 
more or less naked above when old, and bears smaller bunches of larger berries, ripening and edible earlier, say in 
August and September, whence the name. 
The winter-grape, Vitis cordifolia, grows in richer oe mney fe in shady woods, on our river banks and in [661] 
their bottoms, attaining greatest dimensions (some 0 inches in thickness and 80 or more feet in 
height) ; it has undivided or (with us) usually slightly ta: leaves with sharp sinuses between the lobes, entirely 
naked even when young or covered with a slight whitish down, and bears smaller berries in larger bunches, ripening 
and edible not before October or even November. Those that have experimented on ret contend that, notwithstand- _ 
ing this, the wine made of this winter grape is by far superior to that made of the sum pe. 
h these species are extremely variable, and it is quite probable that, being diroelous 1 they by hybridization 
produce intermediate forms, ofr may become of interest to the cultivator, and may indicate the method by which to 
produce valuable new varieties. 
e are the principal a not the only species of Vitis proper, in our State, and they grow in all its counties as 
well as throughout the Mississippi valley. They are comprised in Prof Swallow’s enumeration under numbers I to 4, 
pp. 160-161. His No.1, V. Labrusca, is not the plant which Linneus has designated by this name and which to eastern 
botanists is known as ea This, the true Vitis Labrusca, is a plant with rusty woolly leaves (naked above when old), 
bearing very large pulpy berries of a foxy taste, whence the popular name of fox grape in the eastern 
found, as far as I am informed, all along the Atlantic slope and up into the Alleghany Mountains, but does not extend 
into the er valley. It is considered to be the mother plant of the cultivated Catawba, Isabella, and other 
American varieties 
1 It is an interesting fact that all the true grapes. of times repeated experiments, instituted with almost e 
America (not those belonging to the section Cissus), in the variety of this plant from all parts of the Old World, that the 
wild state, are dicecious or dicecio-polygamous, while the culti- Vitis vinifera, the grape-vine of Europe, will not thrive in our 
vated varieties bear complete flowers. The same is the case climate. Soon losing its leaves under our burning summer 
with the grape- vine of the Old World, which still grows wild 
and to an immense size in the marshy forests of the lower 
Arno in a being called there to this day by the old 
e, mentioned by Virgi a name which 
Kinnens has improperly applied. to one of the American 
2: It is well known and sufficiently proven by a thousand 
sun, it is scarcely able to ripen the few bunches of fruit it 
may bear, and cannot bring its wood to perfection ; so that 
our variable winters almost ‘always kill the ye down to the 
ground, if not carefully aorerane ot be possible 
a grape-vine ait we tough and 
ea f our peta grapes and the luscious and 
ies fruit of the better varieties of Vitis vinifera ? 
