Vitis vinifera L.
Eng.: Wild grape-vine. Spa.: Vid silvestre, parra silvestre. Fre.: Vigne sauvage. Ara.: the wild vine: gemmuna; the cultivated form: kerma, dalia, dalya, d-lilit, laâneb, adhil; the fruit: aneb; the grape raisins: sbib. Tam.: tizurín, asberbui, ttara, tezurit, tenneda, adil.
Climbing plant, lianescent, deciduous, hermaphrodite or dioecious, stems woody, sarmentose, which can reach up to 30 m long —climbing between trees, walls or rocks—. Trunk sometimes well defined, very tortuous, with greyish-brown or brown-black bark, highly fissured, which peels into longitudinal strips. Branches sarmentose, flexible, with thick nodes and internodes with papery bark, smooth and grey on young branches, fissured in more than one year old branches. Leaves alternate (5-25 × 5-20 cm), palmate, clearly petiolate and dimorphic: those on male plants with varying lobes (usually 3-7), sometimes very deep, coarsely serrated; those on female plants slightly or not lobed, glabrous and bright green on the upper side of the leaf, lighter and slightly villous on the underside. Tendrils are born opposite the leaves, first herbaceous, later on woody, which the plant uses to climb. Inflorescence paniculiform (a raceme of racemes), pendant, arranged opposite the leaves. Calyx disk-shaped, light green, with 5 very small teeth. Petals 5, light green, very small, fused at the tip, falling together as the flower opens, exposing ovary, style and stamens. Fruit a globose berry 5-7 mm, red-purple to blackish. In cultivated varieties the fruits are larger and colour from green-golden yellow to deep black. Seeds 1-4.
Flowering:
April to June.
Fruiting:
August to November.
Habitat:
Forests and rock outcrops that are shady or that have high humidity. Usually along rivers and streams, in the Sahara also in oases.
Distribution:
Europe and SW Asia. Eastern Mediterranean region. In North Africa the species is native to NE Algeria and the most northern part of Tunisia. In Algeria and NW Morocco (widely distributed over almost the entire Mediterranean area) natural reproduction is uncertain. Cultivated or subspontaneous, it grows throughout the region, including in the Sahara throughout the oases.
Observations:
Morales & Ocete (in Flora iberica, 2015) describe a series of differences between wild grapevines [V. vinifera subsp. sylvestris (C.C.Gmel) Berger & Hegi] which are monoecious, and cultivated grapevines (type subspecies) which are hermaphrodite. The wild grapevines present an obtuse basal lobe in most of the leaves and open in more than 90º, with very lax fructiferous racemes, in which the fruits barely touch each other (small and acid in flavour). In the cultivated ones, the basal lobe is acute, at an angle of less than 90º, and with the fruits (larger and sweeter) sometimes very tight against each other. However, the differentiation between the 2 groups (when cultivated varieties become wild) is very difficult, even with molecular techniques. Therefore some authors, such as those mentioned, consider that such differences do not have enough taxonomic value to divide the species into 2 subspecies
Conservation status:
A relatively rare species but widely distributed. It is not considered threatened. Currently, in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is listed at a global level as Least Concern (LC) (Participants of the FFI/IUCN SSC, 2007).