Southern Muscadine Grape Bonsai

Corrado

Mame
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Thought Id show how prolific and nice this grape works out with Bonsai techniques. The leaves are pretty small and show nice fall color . Grapes taste amazing. I have it abot 5 years now in training from a 2 year old plant.
 

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Zach Smith

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Thought Id show how prolific and nice this grape works out with Bonsai techniques. The leaves are pretty small and show nice fall color . Grapes taste amazing. I have it abot 5 years now in training from a 2 year old plant.
Very nice. I've grown a couple myself. You just have to be flexible with the styling, but they perform well in a pot.
 

Corrado

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Well said Zach. Im eating several grapes daily. They have the highest concentration of Resveratrol in any food. That substance is linked to anti-aging !!
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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I like your grape, looks nice, nice movement in the trunk. Taper is visible. I like it.

A design thought, a red or blue or black fruit variety of muscadine would show better color contrast than the green or white grapes.

I think any grape works reasonably well. I'm in the ''great frozen north'', too cold to winter muscadine outdoors. Up here we have many different American species and hybrid grapes to choose from, and some French-American varieties as well. In our forests it is easy to find wild grapes with enormous, fabulously twisted trunks. The wild V. riparia and V. labrusca have small fruit, usually very dark blue-black. Both are common in the forests of their respective areas
Concord grape is a standard up north, it's wild ancestor is Vitis labrusca. The white waxy bloom gives these deep purple grapes a nice blue appearance. Good contrast against the green foliage.
 

Corrado

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I agree with you on the color contrast. I only wanted the Muscadine because of its Resrveratrol substance. Its a very firm meaty grape with a nice flavor of grape . Also the leaves are naturally smaller than northern types.
 

JoeR

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I agree with you on the color contrast. I only wanted the Muscadine because of its Resrveratrol substance. Its a very firm meaty grape with a nice flavor of grape . Also the leaves are naturally smaller than northern types.
These grow wild in my yard, and interestingly, I had never previously even considered taking them for bonsai purposes. Although I’ve looked into every other species including honeysuckle or the forbidden Easter Red cedar, never this one. I definitely have to give it a shot.

Although good, I find the seeds can occasionally leave a horribly bitter taste, and It makes me feel as though I’m getting cyanide poisoning consuming them haha. Which obviously is not the case but still
 

Corrado

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Yeah I usually either swallow the whole pulp mass with seeds without chewing down on it or with my tongue I seperate the seeds from the pulp and spit them out. They are pretty large seeds. I believe there are muscadine grapes that are a dark color as well. Believe it or not there is a 400+ year old muscadine grape growing on Roanoke Island .I think the native americans worked with this vine and today one of the wineries makes its wine from it calling it mothervine wine.
 

substratum

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Thank you for showing this example of a muscadine bonsai.

This image is a small variety of wild muscadine grape that grows on my property in North Florida. As you can see, they are indeterminate as they ripen. The deep purple ones are wonderfully sweet, flavorful, and juicy; the plum color ones have some flavor, but zero sweetness, and little juice; the green-to-yellow ones are hard, flavorless, and will set your teeth on edge. I'm one of those that chews them, and spits out the skin and seeds.

I hope to air layer some of these in the spring, particularly since the recent hurricane dislodged portions of these vines, some of which have bends, character, forks, and nicely textured bark. Most of that stuff was well out of reach before the winds came.
 

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Corrado

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Yes there are different varieties of Muscadine grapes and mine is the white one but there is the red and dark black type also. I think mine is a Scuppernong . I have to see if I still have the tag when I bought it at the nursery.
 

Silentrunning

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I have an older muscadine vine that didn’t do too well this year so I have cleaned the grass away from it and put down a good layer of mulch to help keep the ground moist. After seeing this one I believe I will put some real effort into saving it and getting it into a pot.
 
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