Narrative
Type = Hybrid. Per Munson (see citation): "Plant: 'Attains large size, climbing high, leaves to a great age' Roots: Not examined. Wood: Annual, thick, angled and irregularly striated with a few shallow striae; growing tips not leafy and densely rusty tomentose; color dark chestnut, set with rusty woolly tomentum, becoming floccose, and with short, stiff pubescence near the nodes; outer bark separating in thin fibrous plates, and shedding second year, true bark in old vine checking fine, wood dense, slowly shedding by small bits, persistent, much resembling V. cinerea, in body of vine, wood dense, tough, fibrous, sectional view, of annual wood, rays numerous, thin, pores large, abundant; nodes but little enlarged, slightly bent; diaphragm very thick, buds globose or sub-conical with rusty wool at the summit; tendrils once or twice forked, long striated, rusty woolly when young, very strong, internodes medium to long, 4' to 5' or more; pith nearly twice the thickness of the wood, firm, insensibly passing into the diaphragm. Leaves: Stipules minute, rusty woolly; petiole about 1/2 the length of midrib, slender, rusty tomentose or pubescent, narrowly grooved above, attached to blade at obtuse angle; blade in length about the same as in width or slightly more, averaging 4' to 5'. [...] Upper surface when young covered with cobwebby hairs which become floccose and disappear maturity, leaving a dull green finely wrinkled surface in which the ribs are sunken; lower surface covered with thin layer or pale rusty felt-like tomentum, more rusty along the ribs; texture rather leathery. Cluster: Fertile,--very large compound, generally lax in appearance, similar to V. cinerea of Florida, but with shorter, more slender pedicels; peduncle medium, covered with dull rusty tomentum, rachis thinly rusty woolly, its branches and their short subdivisions densely rusty wool pedicels many, about 1/8' long, slender, smooth at flowering season; sterile,--not seen by writer described by DeCandolle as exceeding the leaves in length, which would require a very large large cluster. Flowers: Fertile,--minute, stamens erect or horizontal, nearly as long as the pedicels, as large; ovary minute, globose-conical; style short. Berries: Described by D.C. as very small, globular, and glabrous. This [describes] well the berries received from Jamaica and Hoduras, Central America. Seeds: 2 to 3, very small, ovoid, subcordate, chestnut color, beak short, raphe filiform chalaza obovate or orbicular, in center of black of seed (D.C.)"