As the summer closes and the trees, flowers and vines have all reached
their greatest perfection, have fulfilled their mission in life, and in
addition have beautified all the spring and summer our lawns and
verandas, and have been admired as wonderful children of the florists’
skill, how many of us know that many of them and especially most of
these beautiful vines, could be found in our wild woods just for the
looking? That we could with our own hands transplant them to our homes
and have just as beautiful vines on our little porches and verandas as
any millionaire on our boulevards?
One vine that we see covering our stateliest mansions and growing over
our most humble little cottage, is common in all the woods of the United
States from Maine to Florida, from New York to California, is the
Ampelopsis quinquefolia—or Virginia creeper—American ivy or woodbine—its
name changing with the portion of the country you happen to be when you
find it, for we see it frequently under its various names in
cultivation, and it certainly grows in great abundance and in the most
graceful ways in our woods, over trees and shrubs and old rock fences,
clinging in the most loving way to any surface with which it comes in
contact. It belongs to the order Vitaceæ or Vine family, which is a
family of climbing shrubs, and to which all of our wild grapes belong.
Its name Ampelopsis is from two Greek words, meaning vine and
appearance; quinquefolia, five leaved or fingered; its leaves being
alternate and compound, with five leaflets, long and pointed, radiating
from the center. It may be that it was meant to signify that our five
fingers may handle it recklessly and not run any risk of poisoning, as
so many people are fearful of being—they being unable to distinguish it
from the Rhus radicans or poison ivy—which belongs with the sumachs, and
has only three leaflets or divisions in its leaves. This poison ivy
could be so easily exterminated if every one who finds a plant of it
would dig it up and burn it. It surely is as much one’s duty to help
exterminate a poisonous plant as it is to cultivate and nourish an
ornamental, beautiful, harmless one. Yet there is hardly a park in our
larger cities where you will not find the Rhus radicans or poison ivy
growing.
In the Virginia creeper we will find tendrils growing from the base of
its leaves, that swell at their tips into sucker like disks, by means of
which the plant clings firmly to walls and trees in its extensive
climbing. The flowers of this beautiful vine are small, inconspicuous
and greenish in color, with five concave thick spreading petals, with a
calyx slightly five toothed, a two celled ovary or seed vessel, each
cell containing two seeds. It blooms early in June and in the early
autumn, when its leaves are turning the most exquisite shades of scarlet
and crimson, these little flowers develop into clusters of deep blue or
purple berries about the size of peas.
The whole vine is really more beautiful in the autumn than it is in the
spring, and it surely does more than its part in making our American
woodlands such great expanses of gorgeous coloring in the fall as to
attract the attention and remarks of all visiting foreigners.
Miss J. O. Cochran.