ttain a greater height than four or five feet;
these grow in sandy soils, or among rocks exposed to sun and air.
Another runs on the ground and bears foliage almost evergreen. The
stem of one species attains a diameter of a foot, bearing its foliage
in a great canopy. From this giant form the species vary to slender,
graceful, climbing vines. Wild grapes are as varied in climatic
adaptations as in structure of vine and grow luxuriantly in every
condition of heat or cold, wetness or dryness, capable of supporting
fruit-culture in America. So many of the kinds have horticultural
possibilities that it seems certain that some grape can be
domesticated in all of the agricultural regions of the country, their
natural plasticity indicating, even if it were not known from
experience, that all can be domesticated.

Leif the Lucky, the first European to visit America, if the Icelandic
records are true, christened the new land Wineland. It has been
supposed that this designation was given for the grapes, but recent
investigations show that the fruits were probably mountain
cranberries. Captain John Hawkins, who visited the Spanish settlements
in Florida in 1565, mentions wild grapes among the resources of the
New World. Amadas and Barlowe, sent out by Raleigh in 1584, describe
the coasts of the Carolinas as, "so full of grapes that in all the
world like abundance cannot be found." Captain John Smith, writing in
1606, describes the grapes of Virginia and recommends the culture of
the vine as an industry for the newly founded colony. Few, indeed, are
the explorers of the Atlantic seaboard who do not mention grapes among
the plants of the country. Yet none saw intrinsic value in these wild
vines. To the Europeans, the grapes of the Old World alone were worth
cultivating, and the vines growing everywhere in America only
suggested that the grape they had known across the sea might be grown
in the new home.

That American viticulture must depend on the native species for its
varieties began to be recognized at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, when several large companies engaged in growing foreign
grapes failed, and a meritorious native grape made its appearance. The
vine of promise was a variety known as the Alexander. Thomas
Jefferson, ever alert for the agricultural welfare of the nation,
writing in 1809 to John Adlum, one of the first experimenters with an
American species, voiced the sentiment of grape experimenters in
s