A deciduous climbing vine up to 20 ft high; young shoots glabrous, purplish on the sunny side. Leaves roundish to triangular-ovate, three-lobed (often inconspicuously so), shallowly heart-shaped to truncate at the base, slenderly pointed, coarsely and triangularly toothed; 21⁄2 to 5 in. long, glabrous on both sides, but of a glittering green above and pale or rather glaucous beneath; stalk purplish, 11⁄2 to 3 in. long. Flowers crowded in a branching cluster at the end of a slender stalk 1 to 2 in. long. Fruits dark blue, flattened-globose, 1⁄5 in. wide.
Native of Hupeh and Szechwan, China; introduced by Wilson in 1900 to Veitch’s Coombe Wood nursery. It was put in commerce by them as “Vitis repens”. It is apparently one of the two plants once called “Vitis flexuosa wilsonii” but the charming little vine more generally grown under that name is a true Vitis, and correctly called V. flexuosa var. parvifolia. There is a vigorous plant of A. bodinieri on the vine pergola at Kew.
A. humulifolia Bunge Cissus davidiana Carr.; Vitis davidiana (Carr.) Nichols. – An ally of the above, also native to China. It resembles A. bodinieri in its lustrous leaves, but these are of a brighter green, and usually three- or five-lobed, rarely unlobed, with rounded sinuses. Also distinguished by its fruit, which is pale yellow, changing partly or wholly to pale blue. It has been confused with A. brevipedunculata, but differs in its thicker and firmer leaves, which are whitish beneath. Introduced to cultivation by the French missionary David around 1865.
A. vitifolia (Boiss.) Planch. Cissus vitifolia Boiss.; Vitis persica Boiss. – A native of S.W. Asia from Persia to Kashmir, allied to A. bodinieri, but differing in the absence of tendrils and other characters.