Vitis rotundifolia Michx.

MUSCADINE

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The taxonomy of Rogers & Mortensen (1979) recognized V. munsoniana, generally of the Florida peninsula, which is fully supported by a recent nuclear DNA phylogeny that includes 3 samples of V. munsoniana from Florida and numerous of V. rotundifolia s.str. from across its range including one from Leon Co., FL (Talavera et al. 2023). This taxon is distinguished by its infructescence usually of 12-30 berries, the <1 cm wide fragile berries dark purple-black and lacking lenticels, and the seeds <7 mm long. A form with small leaf blades 2-3.5 cm wide can be recognized as var. pygmaea and occurs in the scrub of Highlands and Polk Cos. (Ward 2006). Then V. rotundifolia, generally of the panhandle, has an infructescence usually of 2-8 berries, the usually >1.5 cm wide tough berries bronze-purple and often lenticellate, and the seeds >7 mm long (Rogers & Mortensen 1979). This species is closely related to the Neotropical species V. popenoei. Together these species constitute subg. Muscadinia and appear to be sister to the other ca. 70 species in subg. Vitis (Liu et al. 2016).

Native FAC (NWPL) AD (WAP)

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