# Muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia)

> The South's native grape vine, with thick-skinned purple-black or bronze grapes in late summer and fall for eating fresh, jelly, wine and wildlife.

Also called muscadine grape, scuppernong, southern fox grape, bullace, Muscadinia rotundifolia. Category: Nut & Fruit Trees. Grown from seed by Blue Whale Trees. Web version: https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/muscadine/

![Muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia) four large purple-black grapes with pale dots on a stem among the leaves](https://bluewhaletrees.com/img/plants/muscadine-h1610-800.jpg)
*Photo: Douglas Goldman, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped · [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AVitisRotundifolia2.jpg)*

## Facts

- Type: Shrub
- Mature height: 30 to 90 ft
- USDA hardiness zones: 5 to 9
- Grows wild in: Dry uplands, floodplain forests, sandy barrens and the coast
- Native range: 17 states, north to [Delaware](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=DE), south to [Florida](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=FL) and west to [Texas](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=TX) ([Alabama](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=AL), [Arkansas](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=AR), [Delaware](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=DE), [Florida](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=FL), [Georgia](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=GA), [Kentucky](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=KY), [Louisiana](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=LA), [Maryland](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MD), [Mississippi](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MS), [Missouri](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MO), [North Carolina](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=NC), [Oklahoma](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=OK), [South Carolina](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=SC), [Tennessee](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=TN), [Texas](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=TX), [Virginia](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=VA) and [West Virginia](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=WV))
- Sun: Full, Part
- Soil moisture: Average, Dry
- Growth rate: Fast
- Flowers: April to June
- Fruit: Berries, August to October
- First crop: About 3 years after planting
- Mature spread: 20 ft
- Traits: Edible, Wildlife value, Drought tolerant
- Sold as: Saplings, Seed

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

## Availability

Saplings ship [bare-root](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/planting-bare-root-trees-on-arrival/index.html.md) or [in a pot](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/a-sapling-in-a-pot/index.html.md), [usually 12 to 18 inches tall](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/small-sapling-or-big-transplant/index.html.md), in the dormant season, and their [height and age](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/reading-a-nursery-listing/index.html.md) are stated with the price, once available. Live plants ship February to May. Not priced yet: leave an email on the web page for one email when it is priced, with a code for 10% off the plants in that order, not shipping or tax, or write to captain@bluewhaletrees.com.

## Notes

Muscadine is the native grape vine of the Southeast, the first native grape cultivated in North America and the parent of hundreds of named varieties. Its tendrils are simple rather than forked, its bark stays tight instead of shredding, and it climbs high into trees or sprawls over thickets. Bronze muscadines are often called scuppernongs, after the first named variety, found near the Scuppernong River in North Carolina. It resists Pierce's disease and the phylloxera that keep bunch grapes from thriving in much of the South. Train it on a wire trellis or a sturdy arbor in full sun.

## Size, growth and what to expect

Muscadine grows fast, nearly three feet a year in our growth estimator, and in three years a planted vine can cover 6 feet by 15. Wild vines climb 30 to 90 feet into the treetops, and a vine may live for decades.

Small, greenish flowers open from late April into June. Its grapes come singly or in small, loose clusters, half an inch to an inch across, purple-black or sometimes bronze, with thick, tough skins and up to five hard seeds. The grapes ripen from August into October and drop when ripe, and birds, deer, wild turkeys, raccoons, foxes and black bears eat them. People eat them fresh or make them into jelly, juice and wine.

It grows wild from Delaware south to Florida and west along the Gulf Coast to eastern Texas, and up the Mississippi valley to Missouri and Kentucky. It lives in upland and lowland woods, swamps, thickets, forest edges, hammocks and dunes. At the north edge of its range it is rare, critically imperiled in Missouri and unconfirmed for decades in West Virginia.

## How to grow Muscadine

Muscadine fruits best in full sun, and shade for more than a few hours a day cuts the crop. It wants deep, well-drained, slightly acid soil, and it fails where water stands even briefly after rain or over a hardpan. Once established it is quite drought tolerant. Winter cold below 0 degrees F injures the vines, and they do best where winters seldom fall below 10 degrees F. Give it a single wire 5 to 6 feet above the ground or a sturdy arbor, since a vine on a pergola is hard to keep pruned. Set the trellis 10 feet from a wall, and set vines 20 feet apart along it. It burns readily, so where wildfire is a risk keep it out of the planting zone next to a house. It climbs whatever it reaches, so keep it more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in late winter or early spring, once hard freezes are past, in a hole wide enough to spread the roots and at the depth they grew. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stem. Cut the new vine back to one stem of two or three buds. Tie the strongest new shoot to a stake and lead it up to the wire. Strip the ripe grapes and wash the seed clean of the pulp. For a spring sowing, hold the seed damp in the refrigerator for 12 weeks first. Seedlings vary and do not come true to a named variety, so named varieties are grown from cuttings.

Water during dry spells for the first two summers, and keep a circle around the vine free of weeds with a coarse bark mulch. Feed young vines lightly, since too much nitrogen at once can kill them. Train an arm along the wire in each direction, aiming to reach the wire the first season and full length the second. Prune hard every winter, cutting each side shoot back to two to four buds, or the vine becomes a tangled, fruitless mass. Deer browse it, though the vine is moderately resistant to them.

Wild vines are male or female, and males outnumber females, so plant three to five seedlings to be sure of a fruiting female. Named varieties with perfect flowers, such as 'Carlos' and 'Noble', fruit alone and pollinate female vines within about 25 feet, but seedlings do not come true to them. Wind and insects carry the pollen. Japanese beetles are the worst insect, and powdery mildew, black rot, bitter rot and leaf spot can strike, though home vines often need no spraying. Trained to a wire, a female vine bears its first grapes in about the third year after planting. Other vines with similar fruit are poisonous, so be sure of the plant before eating its grapes.

## Sources

- [NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: Vitis rotundifolia](https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/vitis-rotundifolia/)
- [NC State Extension, Horticulture Information Leaflet: Muscadine Grapes in the Home Garden (Poling, Fisk and Hoffmann; 2006, revised 2025)](https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/muscadine-grapes-in-the-home-garden)
- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, HS763: The Muscadine Grape (Vitis rotundifolia Michx) (Andersen, Sarkhosh, Huff and Breman; revised 2020)](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/HS100)
- [Clemson Cooperative Extension Home and Garden Information Center, HGIC 1403: Muscadine Grape (revised 2015)](https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/muscadine-grape/)
- [Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center: Vitis rotundifolia](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=VIRO3)
- [Virginia Tech Dendrology: muscadine grape](https://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=654)
- [Flora of North America, Volume 12: Vitis rotundifolia (Moore and Wen)](http://floranorthamerica.org/Vitis_rotundifolia)
- [Mississippi State University Extension, Publication 2290: Establishment and Production of Muscadine Grapes](https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/establishment-and-production-muscadine-grapes)
- [Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Aggie Horticulture: Muscadine (McEachern and Baker, 1997)](https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/fact-sheets/muscadine/)
- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, Nassau County: Q: What is the name of the vine growing all over my trees? (2017)](https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/nassauco/2017/07/19/q-name-vine-growing-trees/)
- [NatureServe Explorer: Vitis rotundifolia](https://explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.132816/Vitis_rotundifolia)
- [USDA NRCS PLANTS Database: Vitis rotundifolia](https://plants.usda.gov/plant-profile/VIRO3)
- [Missouri Department of Conservation: Missouri Species and Communities of Conservation Concern Checklist, 2024](https://mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/2024-03/SOCC%20Checklist%202024_ADA_0.pdf)
- [West Virginia Division of Natural Resources: Rare Plants tracked by the West Virginia Natural Heritage Program, 4 August 2020](http://wvdnr.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/RTE_Plants.pdf)

## Read before planting

- [Ten planting mistakes that quietly kill trees](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/ten-planting-mistakes/index.html.md)
- [Transplanting young trees: timing, water and protection](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/transplanting-young-trees/index.html.md)
- [Protecting young trees from voles, rabbits, deer and squirrels](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/protecting-trees-from-animals/index.html.md)
- [A native food forest: the layers and the species](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/a-native-food-forest/index.html.md)
- [The habitat around a tree is part of the tree](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/habitat-around-a-tree/index.html.md)
- [What a young tree looks like: first-year seedlings of oak, walnut, hickory, chestnut, maple and redbud, and the weed trees to pull](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/what-a-young-tree-looks-like/index.html.md)

## Related

- Other grapes (Vitis) we grow: [Riverbank Grape](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/riverbank-grape/index.html.md)
- Trees to plant it under: [American Persimmon](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/american-persimmon/index.html.md), [Pignut Hickory](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/pignut-hickory/index.html.md) and [Mockernut Hickory](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/mockernut-hickory/index.html.md)
- [Planting-site check](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/site-check/index.html.md): for a thrive, struggle or fail verdict on Muscadine, add ?species=muscadine with zone (2 to 10), sun (full, part, shade) and moisture (dry, average, wet) to that address; for example, the verdict for zone 5, part sun and average soil as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/site-check/index.html.md?species=muscadine&zone=5&sun=part&moisture=average
- [Companion species for Muscadine](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/companions/index.html.md?species=muscadine): the natives that share its ground and the plants that pair with it in a yard.
- [Tree growth estimator](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/growth/index.html.md): how the height and trunk projections are made; the estimate for Muscadine as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/growth/index.html.md?species=muscadine (add height=, years= and site= poor, average or good)
- [Seed sowing planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/sowing/index.html.md): how Muscadine is sown, in the chart for every species (treatment, cold days, depth, timing); the dated plan for it as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/sowing/index.html.md?species=muscadine (add state= and zone= for your own frost dates, method=fridge for the refrigerator route)
- [Pollination planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/pollination/index.html.md): what Muscadine needs for a crop and how many to plant, in the table for every species; the verdict for 3 of them as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/pollination/index.html.md?plants=muscadine:3
- [Planting-window tool](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/planting-window/index.html.md): when to plant Muscadine where you live, as a fall and a spring window from the local frost dates; the windows as Markdown are at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/planting-window/index.html.md?species=muscadine&state=MO&zone=6 with your own state and zone in place of those
- [Planting-distance tool](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/distance/index.html.md): how far Muscadine goes from a house, a septic field, a walk, wires, a property line and the next tree; the distances as Markdown are at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/distance/index.html.md?species=muscadine&near=house,septic,pavement,wires,boundary,tree
- [Bloom and fruit calendar](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/calendar/index.html.md): the months Muscadine flowers and fruits, in the grid for every species; its own row and the gaps of a planting with it as Markdown at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/calendar/index.html.md?plants=muscadine