Plant · P-471

Riverbank Grape

Vitis riparia

Riverbank Grape is a wild North American vine that self-sows along streams and watercourses, which is how it got its name. The small tart berries turn from acid to genuinely good after the first frost, and beyond eating them fresh or dried, the young leaves cook up like other grape leaves and the sap runs sweet. Its real value in a design is underground - it resists phylloxera and is a standard rootstock for grafting wine grapes - while its unpruned fruit and fragrant flowers pull songbirds, gamebirds, waterfowl and pollinators onto the vine instead of a cultivated crop nearby.