I have mentioned before that we have muscadine vines all over the mountain. They grow up in the tops of the pines, and they grow on the ground. They are also growing on a small oak tree just beside our driveway, where we put cat cages to acclimate our cats to their new home when we moved back in 2016.
They are small. Very small. Here is my hand to give some scale. My hands are appropriately sized for my height.
Muscadines provide food for birds and, I assume, squirrels, of which we have quite a few. I don’t know whether these will survive to maturity, and, if they do, how many might be available for us to eat. I doubt that all in the bunch will survive. I have never seen that many grapes in a bunch on any of the vines around here.
Muscadines are sweet, but the skins are thick and tough, and the seeds are large compared to the meat of the grape. All that makes it hard to eat a muscadine, especially wild muscadines. Apparently some varieties are grown commercially, but they are seldom at any of the grocery stores where we shop.
I’m not sure whether these will be the deep red, almost black grapes known as muscadines, or the green or bronze variety called scuppernongs. We’ll see around August or September, when they are supposed to be ripe.
It never occurred to me that there would be grapes growing in the mountains there. I love learning something new.
Robin — Muscadines are everywhere up here. Once a few years ago I was trying to cut some medium-sized pines in our yard and I couldn’t get them to fall because they were attached to all the other trees by muscadine vines. I don’t remember seining muscadines anywhere else around here.