Botany is the scientific study of plantlife. As a branch of biology, it is also sometimes referred to as plant science(s) or plant biology. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study the structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development and diseases of plants. The study of plants and botany began with tribal lore, used to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making botany one of the oldest sciences.

Term "grape" defined in a botanical sense: A well-known edible berry growing in pendent clusters or bunches on the grapevine. The berries are smooth-skinned, have a juicy pulp, and are cultivated in great quantities for table use and for making wine and raisins. he term variety is used to describe a type of grape.  A wine made from that grape is referred to as a varietal (e.g. Pinot Noir).

The Plant
All Vitis are "lianas" or woody, climbing vines. Tendrils occur opposite leaves at nodes, and automatically begin to coil when they contact another object. Vinifera and American bunch grapes have loose, flaky bark on older wood, but smooth bark on 1-yr-old wood.

Muscadine vines have smooth bark on wood of all ages.     Leaves vary in shape and size depending on species and cultivar. Muscadine grapes have small (2-3"), round, unlobed leaves with dentate margins.

Vinifera and American bunch grapes have large (up to 8-10" in width) cordate to orbicular leaves, which may be lobed. The depth and shape of the lobes and sinuses (spaces between lobes) varies by cultivar. Leaf margins are dentate.

Grape leaves are a common delicacy eaten by those living in eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Israel. They are wrapped around a vegetarian filling of rice, herbs and chickpeas or lamb mince and rice.

The grapevine consists of basic portions; the roots which are normal underground, and the trunk, arms, and shoot which are usually aboveground. The shoots consist mainly of stems, leaves, and flowers or fruit. The vine consists of cells and the product of cells, and is an interlaced collection of living and nonliving cells.

The Flower and Pollination
The flower and fruit comprise the reproductive parts of the vine. An inflorescence (flower cluster) is initiated during late spring and summer preceding the year in which flowering and fruiting occur. The cluster occurs opposite a foliage leaf in the same position as a tendril. Flowers are small (1/8 inch), indiscrete, and green, borne in racemose panicles opposite leaves at the base of current season's growth. There are 5 each of sepals, petals, and stamens. Ovaries are superior and contain 2 locules each with 2 ovules. The calyptra, or cap is the corolla, in which the petals are fused at the apex; it abscises at the base of the flower and pops off at anthesis. Species in Euvitis may have 100+ flowers per cluster, whereas muscadine grapes have only 10-30. Vinifera and Concord grapes are perfect-flowered and self-fruitful, whereas somemuscadinecultivars have only pistillate flowers. Flowering in grape occursat the basal nodes of current season's growth in all species. Perfect flowered muscadines have longer stamens,while the pistillate flowers have short, reflexed stamens.

The flowers usually bloom about 6-10 weeks after the beginning of shoot growth, depending on climatic conditions. Flowers are born in clusters, and there may be several hundred flowers per cluster. Most vinifera varieties have perfect or hermaphroditic flowers that have both a functional pistil and stamens. During bloom, pollen grains fall upon the stigma where, under favorable conditions, they germinate. Most grapes are self-fruitful and do not require pollinizers; however, pistillate muscadines (e.g., 'Fry', 'Higgins', 'Jumbo') must be interplanted with perfect-flowered cultivars for pollination. Pollination is accomplished by wind, and to a lesser extent insects.

Antithesis occurs mainly between 6 and 9 a.m. with a rising air temperature. Fertilization occurs 2 or 3 days after pollination. The ovary then develops into the grape berry. There are various types of branch shapes such as cylindrical, conical, pyramidal, globular, or round branches.

The Fruit
Grapes are true berries; small (<1 inch), round to oblong, with up to 4 seeds (Figure 16.1). Berries are often glaucous, having a fine layer of wax on the surface. Skin is generally thin, and is the source of the anthocyanin compounds giving rise to red, blue, purple, and black (dark purple) colored grapes. Thinning is not practiced for most types; crop load is controlled through meticulous pruning (see below). However, French-American hybrids may require cluster thinning for development of quality and proper vine vigor.

Root, stem and leaf structure of the vine

1. Germination of a seed, enlarged, its embryonic root, stem, cotyledons and bud.
2. The embryonic bud alone, at the four-leaf stage of development.
3. Adventitious roots, originating particularly from swellings of the stem or portion of the stem kept in a damp and dark environment.
4. Internode.
5. Part of the bud stem in its first stage of development.
6. The same showing gradual development of the bud.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Young branch with alternate stipulated leaves.
10. The same, at a later stage of development; alternate stipulated leaves; towards the top, nascent clusters and tendrils.
11. Detached stipule.
12. Internode of a branch.
13. Leaf, stipules, petiole and lobed blade with palmate venation.
14. Part of a young cluster.
15. Tendril emergingresulting from the other part of the same aborted cluster.
16. Tendril emergingresulting from a completely aborted cluster.
17. Portion of a leaf enlarged to show its venation.

Floral system of the vine

1. Part of a composite cluster (natural size) showing some open flowers and some still sheathed.
2. Part of the same cluster enlarged showing some bracts.
3. Bud (very enlarged); below, the pedicel; above, a widening formed by the short tube of joined sepals; higher up, the obovoid body formed by the five petals visible by their curving edges.
4. The same bud opening up; below, the pedicel; above, the short tube of the joined, lasting and fixed sepals (completely in this species); higher up inside, the five filaments surmounted by their anthers; above the latter, the five petals detached from their base, still visible at the top, hidden in their lower part, which stands up by twisting upwards; inside at the base of the filaments and alternate with them five nectaries surrounding the base of the ovary; finally in the centre the ovary.
5. External view of the same petals.
6. Internal view of the same petals.
7. The same, upside down, reduced by half (vertical section).
8. Flower, still slightly enlarged, without its petals.
9. Stamen, greatly enlarged, internal view; the two carpels closed.
10. The same, the two carpels open.
11. External view of the same; the filament terminating in the middle of the dorsal face.
12. The ovary (enlarged to the same degree as the stamens) having, behind it, nectaries, filaments without anthers, sepals and peduncle.
13. Joined stigma seen from above.
14. Transverse section of the ovary formed from two carpels with reflex edges, thus forming two sections; two seeds in each section.
15. Longitudinal section of the same ovary.
16. Longitudinal section of the almost ripe ovary, dorsal view; at the top the stigma and short joined marcescent styles; below, the carpels; the median line marking the partition of the reflex edges, the aborted or semi-aborted seeds in one of the sections, the endocarp established by two lines on each side of that marking the partition, the mesocarp being in the space between the endocarp and the outer line (the exocarp) which determines the shape.
17. Ripe ovary or fruit (natural size); part of the external casing (exocarp) having been removed, revealing the external tissue of the mesocarp.
18. Seed enlarged, ventral face.
19. The same, dorsal face.
20. Longitudinal section of the same revealing the layers (exoderm, mesoderm and endoderm), the large albumen and in the lower part the small upright embryo.
21. Seed (natural size) with its funicle.