28 
Dicotyledons with Polypetalous Flowers . 
Natural Order 
AMPELIDE/E Tab. 23. 
Diagnosis. —Climbing shrubs with jointed stems, alternate leaves and 
leaf-opposed tendrils. Flowers minute. Petals 4-5, valvate in bud, falling 
on expansion. Stamens opposite to the petals. Ovary surrounded by a 
disk; placentation axile. 
Distribution.— Chiefly tropical and sub-tropical in both hemispheres. None indigenous in 
Europe. 
INFLORESCENCE leaf-opposed and theoretically terminating the internode immediately below; frequently 
reduced to a flowerless prehensile peduncle {tendril). 
Calyx in Grape Vine (Vitis viniferci) minute, cup-shaped, entire. 
Petals in Grape Vine cohering by their tips, thrown off on expansion. 
Fruit baccate, superior. 
Seed albuminous. 
USES, &c.. Almost the only species turned to account by mankind is the Grape Vine, from remote antiquity 
extensively cultivated in South Europe and the Levant, and now very widely dispersed, though, for fruit-bearing 
pui poses, under rather restricted climatal conditions. From the innumerable varieties of this shrub we have, besides 
grapes yielding the wines of commerce, other sorts which are dried, as “Valentia,” “Malaga,” and “Sultana” 
(seedless) raisins. Dried currants are derived from a small-fruited variety cultivated in countries around the Eastern 
Mediterranean. A Tropical Indian species of Vine (F discolor) is commonly cultivated in stoves for the sake of 
its beautifully-coloured foliage, the leaves being silver-blotched above from the presence of a film of air under the 
epidermis, and crimson beneath. The North American “Virginian Creeper” (Ampelopsis quinquefolia) is one of 
our commonest ornamental hardy climbers. 
