Woodbine

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Woodbine leaf

Woodbine flowers

Woodbine fruit

Woodbine fruit

Woodbine

Woodbine flowers

Woodbine stem and tendrils

Woodbine autumn leaves

Morphology

Trunk

Stems climbing or clambering; tendrils 2-5-branched, terminal adhesive disks absent, rarely present; bark brown, adherent, fissures shallow, ridges short; wood light brown, soft.

Twigs

Grayish brown to brown, flexible, glabrous, older twigs usually without adventitious roots; leaf scars half-round; buds reddish brown, ovoid, .08 to .12 inch, apex obtuse to acute, scales glabrous.

Leaves

Deciduous, alternate, palmately compound; petiole 3.2 to 6 inches, glabrous; leaflets 5(-6), elliptic to obovate, 1.6 to 4 inches long, .8 to 2 inches wide, base wedge-shaped, margins coarsely serrate, apex acuminate, lower surface light green, glabrous or minutely pubescent along veins, upper surface shiny dark green, glabrous or sparsely minutely pubescent along veins.

Flowers

Inflorescences opposite leaves on new growth, corymb-like cymes, without distinct central axis, 15-75-flowered, spreading, 2.4 to 4.8 inches; peduncle 1.2 to 2.8 inches, glabrous; pedicels .12 to .16 inch, glabrous. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric; sepals 5, connate, lobes green, indistinct; calyx saucer-shaped; petals 5, distinct, yellowish green or reddish green, elliptic to oblong, .12 to .14; stamens 5, to .12 inch; pistil 1; style 1; stigma 1, unlobed.

Fruit

August-September; berries, dark blue or purplish black, depressed-spherical, .24 to .35 inch long, .3 to .4 inch wide, smooth, glaucous, glabrous; peduncle and pedicels turning red; seeds 2-4, brown, ovoid, .18 to 24 inch long, minutely granular.

Ecology

Habitat

Rocky woodlands, thickets, bluffs, ravines, stream banks, fencerows.

Distribution

Scattered throughout Kansas