Photo: Hardyplants at English Wikipedia — Public domain · source
Survives zone 4 through 8
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Named for its stoloniferous, thicket-forming habit — running serviceberry is a low eastern North American shrub that spreads by underground stolons and root suckers to colonize an area rather than stay put as a discrete clump, making it well suited to naturalizing, erosion control on banks, and native hedgerows.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–8
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Low suckering shrub 0.5–1.5 m, running at the root into wide colonies
- Light
- Partial to full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native to eastern North America, from Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces south to Virginia and west to the Great Lakes region — documented across states including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and Canadian provinces including Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- moderate, roughly 30-45 cm/year once established, spreading further each year via suckers
- Spacing
- 100 cm (39 in) apart — about 1 m² (11 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Oval to almost circular leaves, 2.5-7.5 cm (1-3 in) long, medium to dark green, finely toothed except near the base; fall color spans yellow, orange, and red.
- Root system
- Rhizomatous and stoloniferous — spreads by underground stolons and root suckers to form colonies and thickets, in clear contrast to the single-crowned, non-suckering habit of A. lamarckii.
- Fruit description
- Berries transition from green to dark purplish-black, resembling blueberries in size and color; sweet and juicy with a hint of apple flavor, good fresh or in pies, and rich in iron and copper.
- Propagation
- Grown from seed harvested green and sown immediately, or from stored seed given about 4 weeks warm stratification followed by cold winter exposure — untreated seed germinates very slowly. In practice it is most easily propagated by dividing rooted stolons/suckers, since the species naturally produces abundant root sprouts that can simply be separated from the parent colony.
- 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. Tolerant of a wide range of soils — sandy, loamy or clay, mildly acid to neutral — and grows in average, medium, well-drained conditions from dry to moist; it is a low-maintenance shrub that does not require rich fertilization.
How it spreads. Named for its stoloniferous habit — the specific epithet "stolonifera" refers to its rooting runners. It spreads aggressively by underground stolons and root suckers, forming dense thickets and colonizing an area indefinitely rather than remaining a single discrete clump; without a barrier it will continue to widen its colony year after year.
Growing tips. Grows in full sun to part shade and tolerates a fairly wide range of soils. Like other Amelanchier it is susceptible to rust and cedar-related rust fungi, fire blight, leaf spot, and powdery mildew, and can host sawfly, leaf miner, borer, and scale insect pests. Fall color ranges through yellow, orange, and red. Because of its running, thicket-forming habit it is best used in naturalized plantings, hedgerows, or for stabilizing banks and slopes rather than as a single specimen — in a small garden it benefits from a root barrier or regular removal of unwanted suckers.
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
Sign in to keep a dated log of when you planted, bloomed and harvested this plant.