Systematics of North American Grape Species

Abstract

North American species of Vitis need an adequate predictive classification to provide knowledge about the germplasm resources of grapes. Since the latest classification effort, much new data and many old names have been found that should be incorporated into a modern survey of the names and plants. There are still many problems, not only for species within the genus but even for the limits of the genus itself. As a first step in the process, all Vitis nomenclatural literature has been searched and stored in a powerful computer-aided data storage and retrieval system, TAXIR (= TAXonomic Information Retrieval). Since the starting date for nomenclature (1753), 155 species names have been recorded for North American grapes, plus 56 names for subspecific categories. The names of the species and subspecies, from 162 different authors, were published from 1753 to 1940, in 73 different journals or books. A large percentage cannot be associated with any presently recognized species, and many others are invalid because they violate one or another of the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature.

The computer program TAXIR, now containing all these data on magnetic tape, can accept new data on various aspects of grape characteristics for an up-to-date register on both cultivated and wild grapes.