Vine vigorous and hardy. Shoots and under side of leaves showing much white cottony pubescence. Leaves large to medium, shallowly three-lobed. Flowers self-fertile. Clusters small, rather open. Berries of medium size, round, dark purple, somewhat sweet to subacid with slight Candicans flavor. Seeds large. Season late. Not a table grape. ELVIRA. (Riparia, Labrusca.) =1.= _Mo. Hort. Soc. Rpt._, =1873=:53. =2.= _Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt._, =1875=:40, 67. =3.= _Mass. Hort. Soc. Rpt._, =1880=:237. =4.= _Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt._, =1881=:38. =5.= _Am. Pom. Soc. Cat._, =1881=:24. =6.= _Ill. Hort. Soc. Rpt._, =1883=:75. =7.= _Bush. Cat._, =1883=:97. _col. pl. and fig._ =8.= Husmann, =1895=:83, 93, 175. =9.= _N. Y. Sta. An. Rpt._, =17=:530, 548, 555, 559. 1898. =10.= _Tex. Sta. Bul._, =56=:270. 1900. =11.= _Mo. Hort. Soc. Rpt._, =1902=:82. =12.= _Ib._, =1906=:65, 66, 67. Though it has never attained great popularity in New York or in the North, Elvira, soon after its introduction in Missouri about thirty-five years ago, was carried to the very pinnacle of popularity as a wine grape. The qualities which commended it were its great productiveness, in which character it is hardly surpassed in favorable locations by any other of our native grapes; its earliness, ripening in the North with Concord; its exceedingly good health, being almost free from cryptogamic diseases and having almost no touch of black-rot in the average season even in the Southwest; its great vigor as shown by a strong stocky growth and ample foliage; and, lastly, almost perfect hardiness even as far north as Canada. Its good qualities are offset by one or two defects which have caused it to lose in popularity as time has gone by until now it is not as widely grown as some of its seedlings. The most noticeable of its defects is its thin skin which bursts easily, thus wholly debarring it from distant markets. Beside this, its flavor and appearance, as it grows here, are not sufficiently good to make it a table grape and it can be used only for wine for which purpose it is much valued, though its habit of cracking in the bunch is sometimes much against it as a wine grape. The wine made from Elvira is light, containing comparatively little alcohol, and by those wine-makers who do not dislike a slight foxiness in flavor, it is considered very good, improving with age and being well adapted for blending with more highly flavored wines. At the beginning of the reconstruction period in France, Elvira was used more or less as a resistant stock and somewhat as a direct producer but within a few years it was condemned and abandoned for either purpose and is now known in France[187] only in varietal vineyards.