american grape vine (vitis labrusca)

american grape (vitis labrusca) deserves a place in the northern edible landscape simply because grapes are wonderful food.

ripe american grapes are juicy, intensely aromatic, and unmistakably grapey, with the rich sweet, musky flavor characteristic of the eastern north american grape tradition. the slip-skin fruit can be eaten fresh by the handful or turned into exceptional juice, jelly, jam, preserves, syrup, fermented drinks, and wine.

mooncrater farmhouse selection

our current cutting stock comes from a tremendous old grapevine growing beside the pond at our southern maine nursery. the property is an old farmstead, and we do not know the original identity or history of the vine. it may represent an old cultivated selection or hybrid rather than genetically pure wild vitis labrusca.

what we do know is the plant itself.

the mother vine is enormous, vigorous, well established in the maine landscape, and produces abundant crops of unusually large, flavorful grapes. we like the fruit enough that we decided the vine was worth preserving and propagating.

we sell dormant hardwood cuttings taken directly from this plant under the working name mooncrater farmhouse selection. every successfully rooted cutting is a clone of the original vine.

native grapes belong in native landscapes

native plantings often contain trees, shrubs, grasses, sedges and wildflowers while almost completely ignoring vines.

that leaves out an entire layer of eastern north american vegetation.

vitis labrusca is native across much of the eastern united states, including new england. wild plants occur along forest edges, in thickets and clearings, beside rivers and lakes, along roadsides, and in both upland and lowland woods.

grapes are vigorous woody vines adapted to moving horizontally through brush and vertically into surrounding vegetation. they can occupy spaces that neither a conventional shrub nor a tree uses particularly well.

that makes them extraordinarily versatile landscape plants.

trellis it, arbor it, fence it — or let it run

for fruit production, the obvious treatment is a traditional grape trellis. vines can also be trained over fences, pergolas and arbors, creating a dense summer canopy that provides fruit, screening and shade.

but a grapevine does not actually need to be treated like a miniature vineyard.

in larger naturalistic plantings, vines can be allowed to ramble through shrubs, along woodland edges, across brush piles, or over rough structures. where appropriate, they can also be allowed to run across the ground rather than being forced upward.

we are particularly interested in this last use on banks, sandy ground and other erosion-prone sites. a sprawling woody vine creates a living network of stems and foliage over exposed ground, while stems that contact suitable soil may become incorporated into an increasingly dense vegetated cover.

we would not substitute grape alone for the deep, fibrous root systems of grasses, sedges and other established erosion-control plants. instead, we see native vines as another structural layer that can be added to them.

on a difficult slope, pond edge, field margin or large restoration planting, there is no rule saying every grape has to stand politely on a trellis.

food and shelter for wildlife

a tangled grapevine is habitat.

native grapes produce abundant fruit eaten by songbirds, gamebirds and mammals. dense masses of vine provide nesting, hiding and escape cover, while the peeling bark of mature vines can be collected by birds as nesting material.

the foliage itself is part of the food web as well, serving as larval food for native moths and other insects.

this creates an interesting overlap between food production and habitat creation. the same plant can feed people from a managed trellis beside the house and feed wildlife from a sprawling tangle at the edge of a property.

if your goal is exclusively maximum human fruit yield, prune and train it.

if your goal is habitat, let some of it become a mess.

a foundational american fruit

vitis labrusca also occupies an important place in the history of american fruit growing. the species and its descendants contributed to the development of the distinctive grape culture of eastern north america, including the lineage that produced concord and numerous other american grapes.

these plants brought something fundamentally different from european wine grapes: intense aromatics, cold-climate adaptation, and a distinctly north american fruit tradition.

growing american grape

grapes appreciate sun. a sunny site generally produces better flowering, ripening and fruit quality, while the species’ natural occurrence along woodland edges reflects its ability to exploit the boundary between open ground and woody vegetation.

give a conventionally trained vine a strong permanent support and expect vigorous growth. pruning can be used aggressively where fruit production and accessibility are the priority.

or don’t.

one of the pleasures of native grapes is that they can be treated as an orchard crop, an arbor plant, an edible screen, a sprawling ground-level vine, a wildlife thicket, or some combination of all five.

propagation

our mooncrater farmhouse selection is sold as dormant hardwood cutting material. cuttings reproduce the mother vine clonally, preserving the fruit and growth characteristics that caused us to select it in the first place.

cuttings are propagation material rather than finished plants, and rooting is not guaranteed.

we are also developing seed-grown american grape stock for future seasons. unlike clonal cuttings, seedlings represent new genetic individuals and will vary in fruit, vigor, growth habit and other characteristics.

we think both approaches have a place: preserve exceptional old vines when you find them, and keep growing the next generation.

grapes are food plants, habitat plants, restoration plants and enormous living pieces of landscape architecture.

there ought to be more of them.