Vine variable in vigor, usually very vigorous, climbing high, sometimes, when without support, shrubby and only three or four feet high; when growing in the shade often sending down aerial roots. Wood hard, bark smooth, not scaling off except in old age, with prominent warty lenticels; shoots short-jointed, angled, with fine scurfy pubescence; diaphragms absent; tendrils intermittent, simple. Leaves below medium in size, broadly cordate or roundish; petiolar sinus rather wide, usually shallow; margin with obtuse, wide teeth; not lobed; dense in texture, rather light green color, glabrous above, glabrous or sometimes pubescent along veins below. Cluster small (6-24 berries), loose; peduncle short; pedicels short, rather thick. Berries large, globular or somewhat oblate, black or greenish-yellow; skin usually thick, tough, and with a musky odor; pulp rather tough; ripening unevenly and dropping as soon as ripe. Seeds two to four, very large to medium, shaped something like a coffee-berry, somewhat flattened, shallowly and broadly notched; beak very short; chalaza rather narrow, slightly depressed with radiating ridges and furrows; raphe a narrow groove. Leafing, flowering and ripening fruit very late. (See Plate.) Rotundifolia, or the southern Fox grape, seems to have attracted the attention of travelers in America from an early period. The references made in the journals of the explorers of colonial times can frequently be recognized as pertaining to this species. Rotundifolia seems to have escaped the attention of botanists, however, until the time of Michaux, who named and described it. Possibly the reason for its being overlooked was because of the supposition that this was the species Linnaeus had described under the name Vulpina.[127] The uncertainty as to who first described Rotundifolia created a confusion that was not definitely cleared up for nearly a hundred years and was responsible for the fact that half the botanists called it _Vitis rotundifolia_ and a nearly equal number _Vitis vulpina_. Rafinesque, in 1830, described some three or four species within the bounds of what is now known as _Vitis rotundifolia_. None of these, however, has been accepted by later botanists. The habitat of this species is southern Delaware, west through Tennessee, southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri, Arkansas (except the northwestern portions), to Grayson County, Texas, as a northern and western boundary, to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf on the east and south. It becomes rare as one approaches the western limit but is common in many sections of the great region outlined above, being most abundant on sandy, well-drained bottom lands and along river banks and in swamps, thick woodlands and thickets.