Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

CAROLINA MOONSEED

File Size: 70 KB

Cocculus carolinus (L. ) DC.

Cherokee County, Kansas

Height: Vines, to 13 feet

Family: Menispermaceae - Moonseed Family

Flowering Period: May, June

Also Called:

Carolina coralbead, snailseed.

Trunks:

Stems climbing or clambering; branches unarmed, without tendrils. Bark grayish green to grayish brown, warty, fissured; wood white, soft.

Twigs:

Grayish green to grayish brown, flexible, finely ridged, glabrate or finely woolly; leaf scars half-round to depressed elliptic; buds concealed by dense tomentum.

Leaves:

Deciduous, alternate, simple; stipules absent; petiole attached at base of blade, .8 to 2.4 inches, finely woolly; blade ovate to triangular or hastate, 2.4 to 4 inches long, 1.8 to 3.4 inches wide, base truncate to cordate, margins entire or shallowly 3-lobed, lobes narrowly to broadly triangular, apex obtuse to acuminate, surfaces abaxially light green, sparsely to densely finely woolly, adaxially green, glabrous or sparsely finely woolly.

Flowers:

Dioecious. Inflorescences axillary or terminal on new growth, racemes or racemose panicles, (3-)10-40-flowered, lax, .8 to 9 inches; peduncles .12 to .6 inch; pedicels .12 to .24 inch, glabrous. Flowers unisexual, +/- radially symmetric; sepals 6-9, distinct, lobes white, ovate to elliptic or obovate, .01 to .1 inch, spreading to ascending; petals 6, distinct, yellow, elliptic to triangular, rhombic, or obovate, .02 to .08 inch, spreading to ascending; staminate: stamens (5-)6, to .09 inch; pistillate: staminodes 6; pistils 6, ovary superior, 1-locular; style 1 per pistil, stigma cylindric.

Fruit:

September-October; drupes, red, globose, .16 to .3 inch diam., smooth, glabrous, shiny; stone 1, white, snail-shaped, .2 to .24 inch diam., rim warty, sides concave.

Habitat:

Floodplain and upland forests, stream banks, thickets, fencerows, shrubby hillsides.

Distribution:

Southeast quarter of Kansas

Origin:

Native

Comments:

The distinctive snail-shaped stones of Cocculus carolinus somewhat resemble those of Menispermum canadense, but Cocculus stones lack the prominently ridged rim found on Menispermum stones.

Carolina moonseed leaves