Mystery Muscadine

Last week I had what I thought was an easy question that forced me to dig deeper than I normally would have. A lady called with a question about her muscadine plant that she relocated to an arbor three years ago and she has never gotten any fruit off of it. I assumed she had a female flower type and no perfect flowered variety nearby. Typically you will find nurseries selling varieties that are either female or perfect flowered types. If you plant a female type alone you will not have fruit but many of the female varieties have desirable fruit. Therefore, they are planted with perfect flowered forms nearby to provide pollination.

This lady really wanted to know for sure so I asked her to bring a bloom sample in to get a closer look. After looking at the sample it was apparent she did not have a female variety as I originally assumed but a male plant that is totally incapable of fruiting (see photo above). Male plants are not uncommon in the wild but what really confused me was she said the plant was dug from an abandoned vineyard on her property. Why would anyone plant a male plant I wondered when a perfect flowered plant would produce pollen and fruit? When she told me the vineyard (she believed) had been planted in the 1940's that gave me a critical clue.

I pulled out an old textbook from my college days and found out that until 1948 there were no perfect flowered varieties available and growers were forced to plant male plants to act as pollinators for the female varieties. This lady had the bad luck of moving a male plant which were usually planted at a 1 to 8 ratio in these old vineyards. Of course in the wild you still find plenty of these male plants but they probably only exist in very old vineyards planted before perfect flowered forms became available.