Winter grape

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Winter grape leaves

Winter grape

Winter grape fruit

Winter grape inflorescence

Winter grape bark

Winter grape fruit

Winter grape fruit

Winter grape bud

Morphology

Trunk

Stems climbing; branches unarmed, tips not enveloped by unfolding leaves, tendrils persistent, branched; bark grayish brown, furrowed or sometimes exfoliating in thin strips; wood light brown, soft.

Twigs

Greenish brown to reddish brown, flexible, glabrous; leaf scars half-round to crescent-shaped; pith brown; buds ovoid, .16 to .2 inch, apex acute, scales tomentose.

Leaves

Deciduous, alternate, simple; petiole 1.6 to 2.8 inches, glabrous; blade cordate to ovate, 4 to 6 inches long, 3.2 to 4 inches wide, base ovate to cordate, margins more or less regularly dentate with teeth usually convex on both sides, usually unlobed, sometimes shallowly 3-lobed, apex acuminate, lower surfaces light green, hirtellous along veins and in axils, not glaucous, upper surfaces green, glabrous.

Flowers

Inflorescences opposite leaves on new growth, thyrses, 50-200-flowered, lax, 4 to 5.6 inches; peduncle .4 to 2.4 inches, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; pedicels .2 to .24 inch, glabrous. Flowers dioecious; unisexual, radially symmetric; sepals 5, connate, lobes green, reduced to an obscure rim; petals 5, connate distally, white, oblong to elliptic, ca. .08 inch; staminate: stamens 5, to .08 inch; pistillate: pistil 1, ovary superior, 2-locular; style 1; stigma 1, lobed.

Fruit

August-October; berries, dark purple to black, globose, .24 to .4 inch diam., smooth, slightly glaucous or not, glabrous, flesh not milky; seeds 14, grayish brown, broadly ovoid, .18 to .24 inch long, .14 to .16 inch wide, smooth.

Ecology

Habitat

Floodplain forests, mesic upland forests, stream banks, thickets, bases of bluffs.

Distribution

East 1/2 of Kansas

Additional Notes