Vitis aestivalis: Silver Leaf grape

You are looking at the underside of the Silver Leaf grape, or, more properly, Vitis aestivalis. It is a wild American grape found throughout the Eastern U.S. The silver underside (along with the traditional bright green topside) gives a certain variety of this species the name "bicolor." (And, isn't that red pigment in the stem attractive?)

Aestivalis is very cold hardy. It is also the parent of the winegrape "Norton," which was loved by Thos. Jefferson for its wine, and is even now considered an excellent wine grape. I will be pouring some Virginia Nortons at an upcoming all-Virginia winetasting.

But grape breeders are using V. aestivalis in efforts to breed a Norton-like grape cold-hardy enough to grow in places like Minnesota, New Hampshire, and even Eastern Canada. Aestivalis has already been used to make several very useful hybrid winegrapes. Problem is, it's a devil of a grape to root. Some growers try every trick in the book, but cannot get even one cutting to issue roots. That's compared to most other grape cuttings, which even a greenhorn like me can root without much trouble. Breeders comb the wilderness, collecting wild grapes (the fruit, and the cuttings). They plant the seed, and they root the cuttings, if they can, and thus begins the multi-year effort to create a new cross (hybrid).