Monday, August 3, 2015

a little grape morphology

the fence along the back of the parking lot at work fronts a sort of swamp and there is a wide variety of plant life out there...among other things wild grapes that are using the fence as a trellis ( top photo )...the second photo is of a wild grape leaf and the third is of a domesticated grape leaf in my back yard...the wild leaf is smaller and far more serrated than the domesticate...lots more points...the clusters of grapes are different too...not especially in the overall appearance ( i mean...a bunch is a bunch )...but the domesticated grapes are larger and so are the bunches in that there are more grapes in the domesticate ones...i actually saw single wild grapes growing on the vines...all of which is consistent with an ancestor/domesticate morphology...the domesticates will have been selected for larger and more abundant fruit production as well as the tendency to stay attached to the bunch...i would suppose the wild grape bunches would shatter far more readily...it will interesting to keep tabs on this over the next month or so until the domesticates ripen....as an addendum the taxonomy for the domesticated grapes is Vitius vinifera and the wild grape is Vitius vulpina...a native variety whose range extends from new england to nebraska...it is at home on that fence.

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