Vines
What are they?
The term 'vine' can be used in a descriptive sense to refer to a wide range of climbing plants. Here, the term is used more narrowly to mean members of the Vitaceae - a family of plants that includes the grape vine and its relatives. These are woody, perennial plants that have some of their leaves highly modified into tendrils, which are capable of twining around an object for support. In this way, these vines can clamber over other vegetation and, in the wild, some species attain considerable size.
Where are they found?
We have no native members of this family in the UK, so any plants encountered are likely to be as a result of escapes from gardens or where garden waste has been dumped. Occasionally, plants are found where they have survived longer than a house or garden that once stood on the spot but may now have been removed.
Identification
The species occurring in our region can be separated quite easily by leaf and tendril detail.
Common Grape-vine Vitis vinifera
Introduced from Southern Europe for its fruit, both as a garden plant and commercially. Occasionally found persisting from dumped garden waste or on abandoned garden sites. Flowers May to June. A vigorous climber, producing the familiar grapes that we use for eating and for making wine. Although Common Grape-vine is included here, in reality, many cultivated forms are hybrids of this and a range of North American species that were introduced to combat a variety of pests and diseases, to which the American species proved more resistant.
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Common Virginia-creeper Parthenocissus quinquefolia
Introduced from North America as a garden ornamental and often spreading beyond fences to neighbouring roadsides. Occasionally planted in the wider countryside or found where garden waste has been dumped. Flowers June to August. A very vigorous climber, most often grown on walls for its rich autumn colour. Flowers in somewhat elongate clusters with a clear central axis and with fruits measuring 6mm long. Tendrils with distinctly flattened and rounded suckers developing at their tips were they meet a firm substrate.
Thicket-creeper (see next species) is so similar to Common Virginia-creeper that I can find no two references that describe the differences in the same way and many websites clearly have photographs of misidentified plants. Thicket-creeper is said to have been recorded in East Anglia and the two species are probably confused in the horticultural trade, with both species being sold as 'Virginia Creeper'.
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Thicket-creeper Parthenocissus inserta
(False Virginia-creeper) Introduced from North America as a garden ornamental and much confused with Common Virginia-creeper. Flowers June to August. A very vigorous climber and groundcover species. Very similar to Common Virginia-creeper and often considered merely a form of the same species. Where they touch a surface (e.g. a wall or tree trunk), typical plants should have few-branched tendrils that do not have suckers but which form narrow, elongate swellings at the end. The leaves tend to be more coarsely toothed and the flower clusters are smaller and more broadly branched, without an obvious central axis, while the berries measure 8-10mm long.
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Boston-ivy Parthenocissus tricuspidata
Introduced from North America as a garden ornamental and occasionally spreading beyond fences to neighbouring roadsides. Flowers June to August. A very vigorous climber, most often grown on walls for its rich autumn colour.
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