All About Grapevine All About Grapevine The grape is a wild, thornless, woody, high-climbing, long-living vine of many varieties found in the woods and thickets, bottomlands and streambanks, and fertile and sandy soils throughout the country. It can be found tumbling over fences and stone walls, weaving itself through bushes, and hanging like ropes from tall trees. Grapevine climbs by means of tendrils. A tendril is actually a leafless stem, which twirls and coils itself around a support like a tree branch or another part of the grapevine. The first explorers of North America found so much wild grapevine that they named the new land Vineland. Grapes are cultivated throughout the world for use by the wine industry. The famous Concord grape and other cultivated varieties were developed from the wild fox grape or North American grape.
The wild grapevine generally appears as a stringy, woody, tangled web of reddish-brown twigs and branches, which seem to grow every which way. The vines are always visible throughout the seasons. Young leaves sprouting off the bare vines appear pinkish towards the middle to the end of April depending on where you live, becoming large and round, toothed, sometimes heart-shaped and often lobed as they mature. They form heavy, leafy canopies by summertime as they drape themselves over bushes and stone walls and hang from trees. In the autumn the leaves turn a rich yellow color, then drop to reveal their delicious fruits, exposing the abundant reddish-brown vines among the vegetation.
The grapes are bluish-black, ripening generally in September, sometimes by the end of August. When ripe, their aroma fills the air! Many songbirds and animals feed on the wild grapes, such as grouse, partridge, pheasant, wild turkey, skunk, fox, raccoon, rabbit, squirrel, possum, and coyote.
There is quite a wide variety of wild grapes: chicken, fox, possum, cat, river, summer, winter, frost, bull, pigeon, bunch, muscadine, scuppernong, New England, silverleaf, postoak, dune, sand, and bush. Wild grapes make delicious wine, juice, jelly, and preserves. Grapes are rich in iron and vitamins and are a source of instant energy. They are delicious eaten plain right off the vine, or can be sun-dried for future use. The leaves can be stuffed or rolled. Ancient herbal practitioners prescribed the dried fruit for chest disorders, the leaves were used for wounds, and branch ashes for whitening teeth.
Grapevine comes in all shapes, sizes, and lengths; in shades of reddish-browns, tans, greens, and greys. There is a very old vine that is as thick as a baseball bat, vine so long that kids can swing on it, and vine as thin as yarn. It can have all kinds of natural bends, twists, and angles. Older vine can be rather long, thick, and branched. It usually has a couple of layers of bark, the outer bark being loose and shaggy. The vine underneath is generally of a tan color. Despite their size, the older vines are amazingly flexible.
Young vines are the newer shoots which haven’t had many years in the elements. There is usually a single, tough, stringy layer of bark in shades of browns to reds to purples, and some varieties have a waxy feel to the bark. These vines are generally less branched, can be quite long, and have wonderful new curling tendrils. Underneath the bark, the vine is very green. This vine is still flexible but it does tend to break more easily. Vines can take on a silver-grey color from being very old and weathered, the same way cedar and other woods change color with age.
Picking attire for collecting grapevine should consist of old clothes including long pants, long sleeves, and gloves to avoid cuts, scratches, splinters, and the like. Don’t wear a sweater because the vine’s branches and tendrils will get hooked in it and everything else, from clothes to jewelry to glasses to shoelaces. It is not a bad idea to wear eye protection to guard from falling debris or being poked in the eye with a branch.
The vines should be gathered fresh. Some sources suggest soaking vines that are not fresh in water until pliable, but I find it just as easy to pick fresh vines. The vines are flexible, pliable, and can be bent and twisted quite easily. As they dry out, they keep their shape very well. The vines don’t have to be used immediately. After it is picked, the vine can remain outside unused for a few weeks, more or less, depending on the size of the vine and the weather. The thicker and heavier the vine is, the longer it can sit outside, especially if the weather is cold and/or wet. The thinner the vine and the drier and hotter the weather is, the more quickly it will dry out. As long as there is some flexibility to a cut vine there is no problem in using it. You’ll know soon enough if it is too dry as you use it.
The ideal and the most pleasant time for gathering vines is in the fall. By this time the big yellow leaves have nearly all dropped or they come off easily when the vine is pulled down, and the juicy purple grapes are ripe for picking, if the birds and animals haven’t gotten to them first. I continue to pick grapevine throughout the winter, though not nearly as much as in the fall.
The leaves begin to bud about mid-April, and the vines are still easy to find and gather. But, as spring turns to summer, the leaves quickly grow rather large, new shoots sprout, and suddenly there is lush, green growth everywhere. The big leaves, long shoots, and new tendrils make the vines very heavy, and if picked during the summer, you must cut off and discard this new growth — none of it is good for crafting. New green shoots are too fleshy, like plant stems, and they have yet to develop the layer of bark which begins to appear later in the fall. The leaves can be used for rolling or stuffing, however.
Locating patches of grapevine is easy. Friends, relatives, or neighbors may have grapevines on their property. Take a walk in the woods; take a ride down an old country road. Scan the roadsides. Look up at the trees and into the bushes. In the summer, the size and appearance of the leaves stand out among the surrounding vegetation. Look for the heavy, leafy canopies formed by all the new growth. In late fall and winter look for the stringy, reddish-brown, web-like growth. Think of it as the plant’s skeleton. The color stands out well against stone walls, bare shrubbery, and the greyish trees, and even more so against the white snow.
After finding a good patch of grapevine in the autumn, the first thing you should do is to get permission to pick, if possible. Most of the time, if you ask a landowner if you may trim his vines, he won’t object. Then, stand back and study the area for a moment. You must be sure you are picking fresh live vine and not old dead vine. From a distance, you can’t really tell after the leaves are gone unless you remember seeing leaves during the summer. You’ll have no trouble spotting live areas of grapevine during the growing season, but after the leaves and grapes have dropped, the only way to tell is to feel and bend the vine. Live, fresh vine bends without breaking, and when cut, looks green and moist inside. Old dead vine is brown, dry, and brittle, and is not useful for crafting.
Scatter your picking areas so that the vine has time to grow back, which it seems to do rather quickly. I have found that I can go back to many areas year after year, picking the new growth and older growth that I had missed or bypassed a year or two before. You also may find different varieties of grapevine by picking in other areas. Other varieties may have different colored vines or bark, different textures or appearances, different shaped leaves, and different lengths of vine.
Focus on just one branch and trace it to its beginning. It may be growing directly from the ground or it may keep branching off larger and thicker sections of vine. It may grow one hundred feet straight up into a tree or it may be short and full of branches that cover fences, stone walls, and bushes, depending on what it has to climb on.
With a pair of clippers, cut the vine at the thickness you want. Don’t pull it up out of the ground — as long as you don’t uproot the vine, it will grow back. Then start to yank, jerk, pull, and tug until the vine loosens and can be pulled free. Each time one vine is freed, you’ll discover many more vines that were buried or hidden. Beware of pulling grapevine from dead tree limbs. A good strong vine will bring the dead wood along with it, and sometimes an entire dead tree!
If the grapevine you want is climbing high up in a tree, first try to pull it down instead of cutting it. That way, if you can’t pull it down, at least it can continue to grow and produce grapes. If you cut it and then can’t free it, it is a waste. If you are pulling on a vine that has a few branches, try loosening one branch at a time.
Grapevines, and any other vines that climb by tendrils, are generally very easy to pull down because the tendrils are the part of the vine which attach and curl around other branches and such. Vines without tendrils such as bittersweet, twist and twine their stems around themselves and other branches, and cannot be pulled down easily.