Common Hops (*Humulus lupulus*)
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[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Humulus_lupulus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-09-19-1.jpg)
These are the hops used to flavor and preserve beer. The plant is one of the relatively few native to both Eurasia and North America, so it is impossible to say with certainty whether these particular vines descended from North American stock or from European hops brought over by brewers. (Some botanists have classified the North American populations as a different species, but the difference, says Fernald, is “evasive.”) They were growing along the Montour Trail in Moon Township.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Humulus_lupulus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-09-19-2.jpg)
The flowers are dioecious, meaning that the plant grows separate male and female flowers. These characteristic cones are the result of the female flowers.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Humulus_lupulus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-09-19-3.jpg)
Gray (as revised by Fernald) describes the genus and the species:
HUMULUS L. *Hop. Houblon* (Que.).—Flowers dioecious; the staminate in loose axillary panicles, with 5 sepals and 5 erect stamens. Pistillate flowers in short axillary and solitary spikes or aments; bracts foliaceous, imbricated, each 2-flowered, in fruit forming a sort of membranaceous strobile. Achene invested with the enlarged scale-like calyx. Embryo coiled in a flat spiral. —Twining harshly scabrous perennials of N. Hemisph. with stems almost prickly downward, and mostly opposite cordate and palmately 3-7-lobed leaves. (A late Latin name, of Teutonic origin.)
Sinuses between upper lobes of leaves mostly broad and open ; lower leaf-surfaces bearing yellow resinous granules; fruiting spikes much enlarged, their broad membranous bracts covering the fruits, not bristly.
*H. lupulus* L. (early generic name), Common H. — Leaves mostly 3–5(–7)-lobed or those of branches sometimes uncleft, cordate, rounded to ovate, acuminate or with acuminate lobes, *the sinuses between the upper lobes mostly rounded and open; the lower surface bearing* yellow, *resinous* bitter and aromatic *granules, the petiole rarely equaling the blade;* staminate panicles mostly 5-12 cm. long; *fruiting ament* loose, subglobose or ovoid, *its membranous blunt or short-pointed bracts roundish and completely covering achenes.* — Nat. in alluvial thickets, N.B. to Mont., s. to n. and w. N.E., n. Pa., W.Va., e. Ky., O., Ind., 111., Mo., Kans. and N.M.; also introd. from Eu., long cult, and estab. in waste places, fence-rows, old house-sites, etc. throughout our range. July, Aug. — The native plant sometimes called *H. americanus* Nutt., *H. lupulus* var. *neomexicanus* Nels. & Cockerell and *H. neomexicanus* (Nels. & Cockerell) Rydb.; its characters evasive.
###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Humulus_lupulus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-09-19.jpg) Photographed September 20.