Grapes?

Hi everybody,
I found a large collection of vines covered with what I believe to be wild grapes. They sure smell like them. The plants were found just outside of Boston, MA on September 4. They were found in a forest & existed both as freestanding vines & wrapped around a dead tree up which they had climbed about 30 feet. There is a swamp near the trees (60 feet away) that has dried up in our local drought.  Looking at these photos, am I correct in believing I found grapes? If yes, can you tell what variety? (I have more photos if helpful).

Well, they certainly look like grapes, and they might be concord grapes, but they also might be an unnamed wild variety, as were "concord" grapes before someone gathered and began propagating.

How do they smell?  Grapey?  If you decide to taste them, go very carefully, very very carefully, just as with any possible food plant that you do not already know, and there is not someone there eating large amounts because THEY know.

You could also take a piece of it to a local nursery for ID ing.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Well, they certainly look like grapes, and they might be concord grapes, but they also might be an unnamed wild variety, as were "concord" grapes before someone gathered and began propagating.

How do they smell?  Grapey?  If you decide to taste them, go very carefully, very very carefully, just as with any possible food plant that you do not already know, and there is not someone there eating large amounts because THEY know.

You could also take a piece of it to a local nursery for IDing.

Hi Thekla,
Yes, they smell grapey, like old time Kool Aid grape. Thanks for your tip about bringing the item to a garden store. That had never occurred to me before.

And if they ARE grapes, here is a discussion on recipes for them.

https://permies.com/t/58726/gardening-beginners/Wild-grape-harvest#498497

They sure do look like grapes. If they smell like koolaid they are ripe.  

Hi all,
This looks like a good place to ask about my vines. They look like grapes but the bunches are random and the leaves are split instead of solid. I tried looking them up and the closest looking variety was a zinfandel but not a perfect leaf match. I'm thinking they are a local, maybe wild, variety. Anyone have any input?

Rex Reeves wrote:Hi all,
This looks like a good place to ask about my vines. They look like grapes but the bunches are random and the leaves are split instead of solid. I tried looking them up and the closest looking variety was a zinfandel but not a perfect leaf match. I'm thinking they are a local, maybe wild, variety. Anyone have any input?

Hi Rex. Those look an awful lot like Virginia Creeper, it's somewhat related to grapes, but not edible. Great for wildlife and a beautiful native plant, though!
If you look where it is attached to the building, do you see tendrils with little discs at the ends holding the vines up, almost like little suction cups? That'd be a pretty tell tale sign. Here's a link with identification information and photos. https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=paqu2

Heather Sharpe wrote:
Hi Rex. Those look an awful lot like Virginia Creeper, it's somewhat related to grapes, but not edible. Great for wildlife and a beautiful native plant, though!
If you look where it is attached to the building, do you see tendrils with little discs at the ends holding the vines up, almost like little suction cups? That'd be a pretty tell tale sign. Here's a link with identification information and photos. https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=paqu2

Thanks for the suggestion! They do look similar but I cannot see any little discs, just tendrils. And the flowers are different too. I'll have to dig to find my pics of the flowers.

(Edit) I'm definitely not trying them until I get a good identification.

Rex Reeves wrote:Thanks for the suggestion! They do look similar but I cannot see any little discs, just tendrils. And the flowers are different too. I'll have to dig to find my pics of the flowers.

(Edit) I'm definitely not trying them until I get a good identification.

Ooh, intriguing! Hopefully you can figure out who it is. I shall be curious to find out too! Flower pictures would definitely be helpful.
Good call.

Agreeing with the others.....your latter entry looks  like Virginia Creeper.  Although both grow as vines, the flower and berry clusters are rather different as are the leaves.

Update!  A little late, but I finally have time to play catch up.  It is False Virginia Creeper.  Still toxic to us human folk but a boon to wildlife.  I plan to slowly replace it with a cold hardy grape. A good example of why researching plants before eating them is so important.

https://lizzieharper.co.uk/2019/04/whats-the-difference-between-virginia-creeper-and-false-virginia-creeper/

Wow!

I might have been mistaking false Virginia creeper for Virginia creeper for 50+ years!  I  remember glabrous leaves and tapered tendril ends, usually growing on fences and other plants, not on buildings.

Everything’s covered in snow at this point, but I will be checking on them as soon as I can

Thanks for the link above.😊

I also never realized there were two species!

a good quick check for grapes is to break the stem open and see if the pith is brown, which indicates a grape.

Fox Grape (Vitis labrusca)

The spots on the the leaves indicate a disease called "brown spot" Prune away and discard the affected leaves.

The musky smell of Fox Grape attracts insects, which in turn attracts birds, which is all good...

Yeah, I was leaning towards Virginia Creeper for the second one too, but did think the leaves were weirdly big. Virginia Creeper leaves aren't usually longer or much wider than an adult's finger.

The first one, I'd be a bit more cautious, since I've discovered that there are quite a few native fruit bearing vines which resemble grapes & are not edible, like Raccoon Grape & Moonseed. Even if they are grapes, wild Native grapes aren't something you can just eat. They tend to be very juicy, but way too tough & with the big seeds we apparently bred out of domesticated grapes over the last hundered years.

Fox grape is seedless...

Ah. Maybe that's how we bred the seeds out of the other ones, then. I know they were part of the breeding stock for Concord Grapes.

D Tucholske wrote:Ah. Maybe that's how we bred the seeds out of the other ones, then. I know they were part of the breeding stock for Concord Grapes.

Really?  I thought Concord grape  was a wild variety, vegetatively propagated.  Can you say what the other parent stock went in to the Concord grape?

And personally, every Concord grape I have ever had, has had seeds.  Is there a newer seedless variety of Concord grape?

That's all I know on the matter. I don't eat grapes often, but I saw a video the other day which was bringing up "Grape eating etiquette" for the upper class about 100 years ago. Basically, you cut a smaller bunch from a communal bunch for your plate using the special Grape cutting shears provided & you kept your hands to your mouth to discretely remove the seed, so as not to be offensive. They then went on to say that we had bred grapes to have much smaller seeds over time.

I don't know if there was always a variety in Europe referred to as Concord Grape, even before coming to the US, but I did read somewhere that our Concord grapes were partly crossbreed with the native Fox Grapes, just like many Ohio varieties are often crossed with southern Muscandines.

.

I read what history I could find on the Concord grape association site.

Bred and in Concord Massachusetts  from a few native local strains.  European grapes hadn’t been tolerating the cold.  He planted 22,000 seedlings, waited until they matured and bore fruit, then spent approximately a dozen years choosing the “best” one.  I think he chose well!

The seedless concords are smaller, and do create the occasional seed, and are not as popular or widely grown.  They are a new breeding project, could have been named anything, likely chose to call it a seedless concord because of the astonishing popularity of Concord grapes.

I am used to the seeds, I will choose a concord when next I plant a grape vine.

There’s another variety I have been trying to find for ~50 years.  Most grapes have the pigment in the skin.  When we see a red wine, the red has come from the skin, Concord grape juice is green.  But there IS a grape juice that is red, the Alicante.

If anyone can find that variety, I would love to hear about it!