You may have heard about fox grapes through the "grapevine" while watching the Insititute's new video, Foraging for Wild Grapes. This fascinating four-minute video talks about Concord and Fox grapes and tells you how and where to forage them. To check out the video click here. Native Americans found late summer and early autumn grapes useful in so many surprising ways.
About Fox Grapes
In the Vitis or grapevine genus, Vitis labrusca or the fox grape is native to eastern North America including Connecticut. Fox grapes are a source of many grape cultivators including Concord, Delaware, and Catawba, as well as hybrid grape varieties such as Agawam, Alexander, and Onaka. The majority of Vitis labrusca varieties are red and produce strongly flavored wine. The fox grape variety is considered "slip skin" grapes because when squeezed gently between two fingers, the thick skin slides off leaving the pulp intact as a round ball.
This woody deciduous vine climbs by tendrils on adjacent plants and trees, and sprawl horizontally over low-growing shrubs. The leathery palmate leaves have three lobes that are hairless and directly across from a forked tendril with flowers or fruit. The underside of the leaves is fuzzy with brown-gray hairs that tend to fade away with age. The flowers have five petals and blooms in the late spring or early summer. Fertile female flowers are replaced by berries that are arranged in drooping panicles. The round berries are bluish-black and on the inside, they have juicy flesh and several seeds. Their flavor runs from sweet-tart to sweet with musky overtones. Wild Grapes are found in lowland to upland forests, near thickets, along roadsides, fences meadows, sandy hills, and along riverbanks. They prefer sun and deep rich moist well-drained soil. The trunk of the vine is brown and very shredded; mature trunks are light to reddish-brown and smooth.
Many Native Americans cultivated and used grapes as a source of food. Leaves and berries were also used for dyes and the vines were used for weaving or making rope.
They also used wild grapes for a number of medicinal remedies. The Cherokees made both tonics and infusions from grapes for relief from diarrhea, urinary tract infections, liver pain, and indigestion. Wilted leaves were used to reduce breast tenderness after childbirth and a decoction of bark was used to wash a child's mouth out for thrush. The Mohegan made a poultice of leaves to treat headaches and other aches and pains. To help conception along in horses, the Iroquois would mix a decoction of grapevine roots with their feed.
Did You Know...
The foxy smell of the grapes is used to describe the unique earthy and sweet musky aroma emitted from these grapes. Foxy does not refer to the animal when describing these grapes!
In the 19th century, Ephraim Bull of Concord Massachusetts cultivated seeds from wild labrusca vines to create the Concord grape. He won first prize in 1853 at the Boston Horticultural Exhibition for the Concord Grape and in 1954 introduced it to the market. In 1869, Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch developed the first Concord grape juice in his house from this grape.
The fox grape was probably the grape sighted by Norse explorers from Greenland when they named this maritime area Vineland.
The word grape is from the Frankish graper, to pick grapes came from Old High German krapfo meaning hook; the fruit was named for the hook used to harvest it.
If you go searching for wild grapes, be careful not to mistake it for Moonseed. This plant has similar leaves to a wild grape but it is poisonous. A moonseed's fruit has one seed in the shape of a crescent moon.
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