VIRGINIA CREEPER AND POLITICIANS

VIRGINIA CREEPER,...COMPOUND LEAF WITH  FIVE LEAFLETS...

...A VINE THAT CLIMBS BY TENDRILS

...DRAPED OVER A WHITE PINE

...COVERING SUMAC BUSHES

Tuesday, 8:30 AM.  45 degrees F, wind WSW, calm with occasional gusts.  The sky is mostly cloudy and dark, with some high overcast. The humidity is 87% and the barometer has bottomed out and remains steady, at 29.60".
   Virginia creeper, also known as wood bine,  has been an especially noticeable stalwart this year, covering trees and shrubs with its graceful drapery. It can be weedy, so keep it out of the garden. It is among the first plants to turn color in the fall and has dominated the landscape in many places.  It climbs by modified branchlets called tendrils, as do grapes, and is in the grape family, the Vitaceae.

    There are at least two species of Virginia creeper hereabouts, Parthenocissus quinquifolia and P. inserta. They add interest to tree trunks, rocks and other plants as they climb about, the former by little suction discs on the tendrils, the latter by twining tendrils alone. They are closely related to the cultivated Boston ivy, which is a horticultural derivation of a third species, P. vitaceae.  As far as my abilities will take me, I believe the prevalent species in the Bayfield area and the one pictured is P. quinquifolia, but the reference books themselves seem rather confused about the three (or maybe only two) species, so I don't feel too badly about it.  I am going to keep working on it, but I am inclined to consider the plant pictured being a hybrid (how's that for spin;  I should run for office).

  Virginia creeper has rather insignificant flowers but bears clusters of attractive, blue-black fruit.  Native Americans had a number of medicinal and ceremonial uses for  the fruit and other parts of the plant and there is some reference to using the berries  for food, but I also see references to the berries being poisonous, so take your pick.  

   Folks sometimes mistake Virginia creeper for poison ivy, since they are both vines, and both turn crimson in the autumn, but the former has five leaflets, and the latter three.  Too bad we don't have such a straightforward process for identifying politicians.