Plant · P-472

Mustang Grape

Vitis mustangensis

Mustang Grape is a vigorous wild vine of southern woodland edges and fence rows, easy to identify by the white velvety underside of its leaves. Its tough-skinned berries are too astringent to eat off the vine but make good pie, jelly and homemade wine once processed - handle them with gloves, since the raw skins leave an itchy burn on the tongue. It needs a male vine nearby before a female will fruit at all, and it climbs so aggressively that it can engulf and kill whole trees, so it belongs on a sturdy arbor, a fence line, or a tree already written off rather than a young specimen.