MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON VITIS. 429 
bly Cumarin, which the dried leaves retain with such tenacity, that even after fifty years in the 
herbarium they exhale this very distinct odor. In Cordiéfolia I find it much more strongly developed 
than in any other species. e 
FRoM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE St. Lovis ACADEMY OF SCIENCE (Procrepines), Vou. IV. 1880, 
Witp Grapes. — One of our most important grapes, V. Labrusca, or the Northern Fox grape, does not [xliv] 
cross the Alleghanies, being a native of the eastern slope. This grape has been improved by cultivation and 
has given rise to all our larger-berried varieties, as Isabella, Catawba, Concord, ete. 
V. estwvalis, or Summer grape, is abundant throughout a great part of the United States, but does not grow wild 
west of the woods of the Mississippi Valley. This grape is the base of the Virginia Seedling, the Herbemont, and 
other cultivated varieties. 
riparia of Michaux, also known in this neighborhood as the June grape, and the River-bank grape. Grows 
farther north than any of the others, being found at Lake Superior, and, skipping the plains, is found on the eastern 
slope of the Rocky Mountains. It also grows in Texas. But in the East it does not seem to occur south of Pennsyl- 
vania. It is an early grape, and sweet and very palatable, 
. cordifolia, or Winter grape, does not grow north of New York and Central Illinois, but at Washington and 
Philadelphia it is the most common grape. The trunk of this grape is the largest of all, being sometimes from eight 
to twelve inches in diameter, at least in the river bottoms of the Mississippi Valley, and climbing the highest trees ; 
its fruit is rather disagreeable. 
The are now obtaining from the woods in this vicinity a large number of cuttings and an immense 
quantity of seed, principally of V. riparia, but also of other species, having discarded the Labrusca entirely. As the 
Labrusca does not grow wild in this region, there is no danger of getting here hybrid varieties. Our wild grapes are 
used in France as stocks to graft their own vines on, in the expectation that the American stock will resist the destrue- 
tion of the phylloxera, which has made such sad havoc among their grape-vines. It has already destroyed one entire 
fourth of the French vineyards, thereby crippling materially the prosperity of the country. 
From THE Botanica, Gazette, Vou. VIII. 1883. 
The Vitis palmata of Vahl has been cultivated in the Paris Botanic Garden for a century or more, and has [254] 
thence found its way into other European gardens without, as it seems, attracting the attention of botanists. On 
the banks of rivers in Illinois, some eighty or ninety years ago, Michaux discovered this Vitis, which he, with the 
very scanty herbarium specimens before him, stowed away with his Vitis riparia, leaving, however, with it his original 
label : “ Vitis rubra, abonde sur les riviéres aux Illinois,” but never even mentioning the name in his Flora. When, 
twenty-six years ago, I studied Michaux’s collections in the Jardin des Plantes, I was struck with the peculiarity of the 
specimens, especially with that which is preserved in the General Herbarium ;? its seeds were so odd that I almost 
suspected a confusion. In this country it seems to have remained quite unknown; in Torrey and Gray’s Flora it is 
suggested that it might be a form of V. estivalis. Vahl’s statement that it came from Virginia is, of course, erroneous, 
but not more so than many other American localities published in those, geographically, dark ages. ay 
Mr. H. Eggert has had the good fortune to re-discover this species last fall, and, collecting it again this summer, 
has furnished observations and specimens which permit me to complete the history of this long neglected plant. 
Virts paumata, Vahl. A vigorous climber with red branches (and often also red petioles), young shoots angular 
and ribbed, older ones losing the bark in large flakes ; diaphragms rather thick ; stipules very short, rounded, early 
deciduous ; leaves smooth, glabrous (or on the nerves beneath with short, straight hairs), dull and rather dusky green, 
cordate with a broad sinus, mostly deeply 3- or sometimes 5-lobed, lobes when long, widest in the middle, con- 
tracted at base and mostly slenderly caudate-acuminate, with few coarse teeth ; flowering racemes compound, long 
peduncled ; berries black without any bloom, rather small (4 to 5 lines in diameter) ; seeds large for the 
size of the fruit, slightly notched on top, single, and then nearly globose, or in twos, when they are hemispher- [255] 
ical and very flat on the ventral side ; beak very short, chalaza narrow, elongated, groove without any visible 
rhaphe. 
Michaux found it abundant on river banks in Illinois, but he may have confounded it with V. riparia, which is 
very abundant there. Mr. Eggert collected it in Missouri, on the Mississippi, in low bottom land, opposite Alton, 
. i i ichaux’s Vitis, he could have obtained that specimen, which had no label 
I ES peae pi dpremiemct 2 cae ar. pando attached to it, until a few years ago Dr. Gattinger discovered 
also preserved in that sheet of V. riparia. As Michaux the species on sand-bars in the Cumberland River near Nash- 
never botanized west of the Mississippi, where V. rupestris is ville, a region well explored by saga 
found, from Missouri to Texas, it remained a question where 
