Photo: Thayne Tuason — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 2 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Saskatoon — sweet, blueberry-like with a distinct almond note. Very good.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–7
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- June–July
- Mature size
- Shrub 2–4 m; containerable when young
- Light
- Partial to FULL SUN — understory tree, but berry production is far better in sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Western and central North America, from Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories south through British Columbia and the Canadian prairies to California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, and east across the plains to Iowa, Wisconsin, Ontario and Quebec — it is the most widely distributed Amelanchier in western North America and the dominant serviceberry of the northern Great Plains and Pacific Northwest.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Moderate — about 30-45 cm/year (12-18 in) once established, reaching mature height (1.2-4m depending on form) within roughly 3-5 years and beginning to fruit at 2-4 years old.
- Spacing
- 250 cm (98 in) apart — about 6.3 m² (67 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Oval to broadly oblong or nearly round leaves to about 5cm long, coarsely toothed mainly in the upper half with prominent veins running out to each tooth; pale to dark green in summer, turning yellow to orange-red in autumn.
- Root system
- Extensive suckering root system built around a woody root crown with both horizontal and vertical rhizomes, allowing the plant to form colonies, thickets, or mats rather than staying a single clump.
- Fruit description
- Blackcurrant-sized berries, roughly 10-15mm across, deep purple-blue, with a sweet, apple-like flavor carrying subtle grape and almond notes — widely regarded as the best-tasting fruit in the genus, traditionally eaten fresh, dried like raisins, or processed into jams, pies, and pemmican.
- Propagation
- Seed is best collected "green" — fully formed but before the coat has hardened — and sown immediately; dried, stored seed instead needs about 4 weeks of warm stratification followed by a cold winter period, and can still take 18 months or more to germinate. In nursery practice, named selections are propagated by division of 2-year-old root suckers, softwood cuttings, layering, grafting, or tissue culture.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile/apomictic
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Adaptable to sandy, loamy, and clay soils across acid, neutral, or alkaline pH, and lime-tolerant — a light spring application of balanced fertilizer or compost improves fruit set in cultivated plantings, but heavy nitrogen feeding favors leafy growth over fruit.
How it spreads. Strongly rhizomatous and colonial — mature plants build a massive woody root crown plus both horizontal and vertical rhizomes (one excavated 9-year-old specimen had vertical rhizomes reaching over 30 inches deep), and USDA Forest Service fire-ecology research found that more than 90 percent of new stems in wild stands were root sprouts rather than seedlings, so it readily forms dense thickets, clumps, or mats and resprouts vigorously after fire or top-kill.
Growing tips. Best fruit production comes in full sun, though it tolerates semi-shade. Like other Amelanchier it is in the Rosaceae and shares the apple/crabapple disease complex — cedar-hawthorn and other Gymnosporangium rusts (orange leaf spotting and horn-like fruit deformities) and occasional fire blight. Birds strip ripening fruit quickly, so netting is often needed. Foliage turns yellow to orange-red in autumn.
Companion planting. Rosaceae host for cedar-apple/hawthorn rust (Gymnosporangium spp.), which needs both a Rosaceae host and a Juniperus (juniper/eastern red cedar) host to complete its life cycle. Spores can travel over a mile, so distance alone won't fully prevent it — resistant cultivars are the more reliable control, but avoiding nearby junipers helps.
Grow journal
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