My French friends tended to change the subject when I mentioned that the US saved their grape industry from being wiped in the late 19th century by a root louse that devastated the European vitis vinifera family of grapes. Then I came across another drop of information: the louse came from the US in the first place. Oops.
The vine louse, Phylloxera Vastatrix, is a yellow species of root louse indigenous to the Mississippi River Valley, and unknown outside North America until 1863. There are two stories on how it got into Europe.
Probably inspired by Darwin’s discoveries of so many previously unknown species, Victorian England was captivated by horticulture, and North American grapevines were brought to England for their botanical gardens. By 1865, phylloxera had spread to the Rhône Valley, and in the following three decades, it decimated nearly 70% of the vineyards of Europe.
The second story is that the American vine cuttings were shipped to the port of Bordeaux and planted. Two years later the grapevines showed atypical galls on the underside of leaves and died a year later.
The indigenous European grapevine is the vitis vinifera family, which had no resistance to the expatriated Phylloxera. It was American entomologist Charles Valentine Riley that suggest grafting European fruiting wood onto the American louse resistant vitis labrusca rootstocks, which ultimately saved the wine industry. The French government awarded Riley the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
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