Raccoon-grape

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Raccoon-grape flowers

Raccoon-grape bark

Raccoon-grape leaf

Raccoon-grape habit

Raccoon-grape fruit

Raccoon-grape fruit

Raccoon-grape leaves

Raccoon-grape

Morphology

Trunk

Stems climbing or clambering; branches unarmed, tendrils long, branched; bark reddish brown to brown, fissured, ridges long; wood white, soft.

Twigs

Green or yellowish green, flexible, glabrous; leaf scars crescent-shaped to nearly round; pith white; buds concealed beneath bark.

Leaves

Deciduous, alternate, simple; petiole 1.2 to 2.4 inches, glabrous or sparsely pubescent distally; blade ovate, 2.8 to 4.4 inches long, 2.4 to 3.6 inches wide, base truncate to nearly cordate, margins irregularly and coarsely serrate, unlobed or shallowly 3-lobed, apex acute to acuminate, lower surfaces light green, sparsely pubescent along veins, upper surfaces green to yellowish green, glabrous.

Flowers

Inflorescences opposite leaves on new growth, cymes, 30-140-flowered, spreading, 1.6 to 4.8 inches; peduncle .8 to 2.4 inches, glabrous; pedicels .12 to .16 inch, glabrous. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric; sepals 5, connate, lobes green to greenish white, indistinct, reduced to a minute rim; petals 5, distinct, white or green, ovate, .08 to .1 inch; stamens 5, to .1 inch; pistil 1, ovary superior, 2-locular; style 1; stigma 1, lobed.

Fruit

August-September; berries, initially green, turning orange, pink, and eventually turquoise-blue, depressed-globose, .28 to .4 inch diam., pustular-dotted, not glaucous, glabrous, flesh milky; seeds 1-4, reddish brown to yellowish brown, broadly ovoid to more or less spherical, .18 to .2 inch, 2-groved adaxially, ridged medially across distal end.

Ecology

Habitat

Rocky wooded hillsides, stream valleys, thickets, fencerows.

Distribution

East 2/3 of Kansas

Additional Notes