NORTHERN FOX GRAPE 



it often takes entire possession of a tree. When transferred to 

 the farm-house enclosures it throws a green mantle of beauty 

 over unsightly places, and makes in all respects an admirable 

 general utility vine. 



The berries are small— less than half an inch in diameter— 

 purple-black with a heavy blue bloom, sour and somewhat as- 

 tringent, ripening late. The species sometimes hybridizes with 

 labr'Asca. 



NORTHERN FOX GRAPE 



Vitis lahrusca. 



One of the common wild grapes of the North and the parent of the 

 Concord and other cultivated varieties. Found in thickets on moist 

 ground in New England, eastern New York, and southward to Georgia 

 and Tennessee. Blooms in May and June and fruits in August and 

 September. 



Stem. — ^Woody, climbing by tendrils, with watery and acid juice; 

 bark loose and shreddy; young shoots very cottony; nodes solid, inter- 

 rupting the pith; tendrils forked. 



Leaves. — Alternate, rusty-brown, woolly beneath, rounded, heart- 

 shaped, palmately veined, varying from merely dentate to deeply lobed 

 with rounded sinuses; opposite each leaf is a tendril or a flower cluster. 



Flowers. — Greenish, small, dioecious or polygamo-dicecious, borne in 

 a compact cluster. 



Calyx. — Minute, obscurely five-toothed. 



Petals. — Five, coherent in a cap and falling without expanding. 



Stamens. — Five, alternate with five nectar-bearing disks. 



Ovary. — Globular; style short. 



Berries. — Few, two-thirds of an inch in diameter, purplish-black with 

 bluish bloom, tough skin and musky flavor; seeds pyriform. 



The Northern Fox Grape is the common wild grape of New 

 England and eastern New York, and has a well-merited claim 

 upon our attention as the parent of the Isabella, Concord, and 

 Catawba — in fact, of most of the American cultivated grapes. 

 The vine is strong, robust, climbing high in thickets and on trees; 

 the young shoots are tawny with much scurfy down; the leaves 

 are large and thick and broadly cordate-ovate; they vary con- 



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