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ers, a as it is a 
4 BUSHBERG CATALOGUE. 
‘ 
THE TRUE GRAPE-VINES OF THE UNITED STATES. 
BY DR. G. ENGELMANN. 
The Grape-vines are among the most variable 
plants, not only through cultivation, by which 
numberless varieties have been produced, but 
even in their wild state, in which climate, soil, 
shade, humidity, and perhaps natural hybridi- 
zation, have originated such a multiplicity and 
such an intermixture of forms, that it is most 
difficult to recognize the original types and to 
refer the different given forms to their proper 
alliances. Only by carefully studying a large 
number of forms from all parts of the country, 
in their peculiar mode of growth, and especially 
their fructification, or rather their seeds, are we 
able to arrive at any thing like a satisfactory 
_ disposition of these plants. 
Before I proceed to the classification of our 
Grape-vines, I deem it necessary to make a few 
preliminary remarks: 
l the true Grape-vines bear fertile flowers 
m one stock, and sterile flowers on another 
i NON stock, and are, therefore, called poly- 
mous, or, not quite correctly, diwcious. The 
sterile plants do bear male flowers with 
abortive pistils, so that hata they never pro- 
duce fruit themselves, they may assist in fer- 
tilizing the others; the fertile flowers, how- 
ever are hermaphrodites, containing both or- 
gans and capable of ripening fruit without 
the assistance of the male plants.* Real female 
flowers, without any stamens, do not seemrever 
to have been observed. Both forms, the male 
and the hermaphrodite, or if preferred, those 
with sterile and those with complete flowers, 
are found mixed in the native localities of the 
wild plants, but only the fertile plants have 
been selected for cultivation, and thus it hap- 
pens that to the cultivator only these are known, 
Pidgin fertile i Aang ry are oftwo kinds; some 
MA aes hermaphr with long and oraiaut stainens 
peat sta 
Wwiiw: 
istil; the 0 thers bear sma aller et 
soon 
dites, a Eperop hing females, and they 
‘ frainta e perfect he arinaphrrdites, unless other- 
wise fer ilized. 
is proper here, to insist on act that nature 
hat paodoced the male e plants wi without a a meio ohject, 
al this object is oubt, f 
2 ge fertilization of the hermaphrodite ey noe 
ell established fact that su 
Vine growers mi 
_ servations, and plant a few male stocks in their vine- 
ds, chom : 40 or 50 r fertil eh 
t from. 
in the boi tae iIwould e 
influence. espec: ae Sa mh varieties tl 
stamens, —- a Tay Ma 
obtained > in 
course un Siaceanes that 
and as the Grape-vine of the Old World has 
been in cultivation for thousands of years, it has 
resulted that this hermaphrodite character of 
its flowers has been mistaken for a botanical pe- 
culiarity, by which it was to be distinguished, 
not only from our American Grape-vines, but 
also from the wild grapes of the Old World. 
But plants raised from the seeds of this, as well 
as of any other true Grape-vine, generally fur- 
y ering 
course only ne the individual character 
of the mother-plan 
The peculiar paseo of the tendrils in the 
Grape-vines, first indicated by Prof. A. Braun, 
of Berlin, furnishes an important characteristic 
for the distinction of one of our most commonly 
cultivated species, Vitis Labrusca, its wild and 
its cultivated varieties, from all others. In this 
species—and it is the only true Vitis exhibiting 
it—the tendrils (or their equivalent, an inflores- 
cence), are found opposite each leaf, and this ar- 
rangement I designate as continuous tendrils. 
All the other species, known to me, exhibit a 
regular alternation of two leaves, each having a 
tendril opposite it, with a third leaf without 
such a tendril, and this arrangement may be 
named intermittent tendrils. Like all vegetable 
characters, this is not an absolute one; to ob- 
serve it well it is necessary to examine well- 
_ grown canes found in early summer, and neither 
sprouts of extraordinary vigor nor stunted au- 
tumnal branchlets. The few lowest leaves of a 
cane have no opposite tendrils, but after the 
second or third leaf the regularity in the ar- 
rangement of the tendrils, as above described, 
rarely fails to occur k branches we 
sometimes. find tendrils irregularly placed oppo- 
site leaves, or, sometimes, none at all. 
e fact, connected with this 
law of vegetation, that most Grape-vines bear 
only two inflorescences (rosea two 
mara of Finshiobe upon the same cane. 
in the forms belonging to pera 
often pbise and sometimes, in vigorous shoots, 
four or five, or rarely, even six in succession, 
each opposite a leaf. Whenever, in rare cases, 
in other species, a third or fourth infloresence 
occurs, there will always be found a barren leaf 
(without an opposi inflorescence) between the 
secon ' ones. 
Young sindtiigs of all the iat 4 are 
glabrous or only very slightly hairy. The cob- 
webby © or cottony down, so characteristic of 
some 8 cies, makes. its appearance — in the 
et 7 
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