Can you eat Texas wild grapes? Sure, go wild. Here are the types that grow in the state.

Sometimes the best Austin Answered queries come from above.

By that I mean, from my editors.

Features editor Deborah Sengupta Stith, an astute gardener, put forth a perfect question for this column in late April.

Stith: "Is Austin overrun with wild grapes? Has it always been? Last year was the first time I noticed them all over one of the trees in my backyard."

Barnes: "Yes. Your eyes do not fool you. There are several varieties of wild grapes, and they are going crazy now."

Stith: "Are they edible?"

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Barnes: "Yes, they are. The Indigenous people planted them along their regular trails so they could eat snacks along the way."

Stith: "Oh, I love that story."

Barnes: "In fact, it's a good way to tell if you are walking a Native American trail. Many of those became trails for the Spanish — along with Anglo Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, etc. — so they nourished generations."

What types of grapes grow wild in Texas?

As many as 14 types of grape vines show up entwined along fences, up trees and woody brush, and alongside human-made structures, including mustang, winter and muscadine.

According to the concise "Naturalist's Austin: A Guide to the Plants and Animals of Central Texas" by Lynne Weber and Jim Weber (Texas A&M University Press), the very common mustang grape is a "high-climbing, aggressive vine, to 40 feet, with alternate, simple, heart-shaped to deeply lobed, green leaves, to five inches, concave, wooly below, with coarsely tooth edges. Clusters of tiny, greenish-white flowers develop into clustered groups of 0.5-inch-wide, round, purple-black fruits."

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You might trip over mustang grapes, for instance, along almost any creek in Austin. As Scouts in Southeast Texas, we treated them, as boys do, as climbing challenges. We surreptitiously smoked old, hollow grape vines as if they were cigarillos. I'm pretty sure one Scout mistakenly smoked some poison ivy, which induced a temporary respiratory crisis.

Weber and Weber identify another common Central Texas native, the winter grape, also known as Heller's grape or Spanish grape, which looks almost exactly like the mustang, but without the concave leaves or wooly underbellies. Unbidden, luscious winter grapes grow along one section of our eastern fences in South Austin.

At this point, it should be said that vines and human structures were not made for each other, even if they look seductively rustic together. Grapes, like other vines, will eventually pull apart wood, stone, brick, concrete and even metal architecture. Keep them at bay in any active garden.

In "How to Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest" (University of Texas Press), Austin super-gardener Jill Nokes identifies 12 types of Texas grapes, including the muscadine, also known as scuppernog: "Vigorous very high climber with relatively small, unlobed leaf blades. Mainly in east and southeast Texas, occasionally as far was as Hopkins and Lamar counties."

Nokes reminds readers of the famous episode in the 19th century when Texas pioneer horticulturist Thomas Volney Munson saved the French wine industry by supplying Texas rootstock resistant to grape phylloxera disease. Munson produced some 300 new varieties of grapes; there's a small museum dedicated to him at Grayson County College in Denison, Texas.

In their classic "Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region" (Lone Star Books), Sally Wasowski and Andy Wasowski write about 14 native Texas grape vines. Among them are ones with seasonal or place names, such as summer grape, frost grape, Panhandle grape, pine woods grape, sand grape and riverbank grape. "Other names describe the grape itself," they write. "Sweet grape, sugar grape, red grape, blueleaf grape, roundleaf grape and graybark grape. Then there's fox grape, pigeon grape, chicken grape and the famous muscadine or scuppernong grape."

Something tells me that these grapes cross-pollinate.

Note: Our South Austin garden, started 26 years ago, is based on Wasowski and Wasowski's book. I just replaced our original copy, which time and overuse had turned into a solid paper block.

And yes, Austin cooks have not ignored our local wild grapes. Some have employed them in unexpected ways. As American-Statesman restaurant critic Matthew Odam wrote in 2022, for instance, about Dai Dui eatery on Manor Road: "Jesse Griffiths bet on Texas and won. The hunter-fisherman-chef opened his East Austin restaurant determined to source solely from the Lone Star State. And not just from local farms and ranches. Dai Due's sourdough starter originated from wild grapes foraged in an alley across the street (at the Vortex)."

More Austin Answered

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Send your questions — or answers — about Central Texas past and present to "Austin Answered" at mbarnes@statesman.