Photo: Nadiatalent — Public domain · 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.
Fruit is very astringent and bitter fresh off the tree but transforms into good jelly, syrup, and wine once cooked with sugar, and was historically pounded whole into pemmican by Plains peoples — ⚠ seeds, bark, and wilted leaves are cyanogenic.
Spread warning. Introduced to parts of central Russia and elsewhere in Europe as an ornamental and windbreak species, where it is flagged by the EPPO as potentially invasive.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–7
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Suckering shrub or small tree 3–8 m, thicket-forming
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native across much of North America, from Newfoundland to Saskatchewan south to North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kansas, with additional populations further west.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast as a young colonizer, slowing with age
- Spacing
- 700 cm (276 in) apart — about 49 m² (527 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Elliptic to obovate leaves up to 12 cm long with sharply toothed margins, dark green above and gray-green beneath.
- Root system
- Shallow, wide-spreading rhizomatous roots (roughly 1–1.5 cm in diameter) that can extend over 10 m laterally and produce abundant root suckers.
- Fruit description
- Small, globular, pea-sized drupes about 1 cm across, ripening through red to dark purple-black by late summer, borne in long drooping clusters (racemes).
- Propagation
- Easily grown from seed after cold stratification, or by digging and transplanting rooted suckers; naturally colonizes by extensive root suckering.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile, though fruit set is noticeably heavier with two or three plants nearby
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
How it spreads. Spreads aggressively via shallow rhizomes that can extend 10 m or more laterally, sending up new suckering stems to form dense colonial thickets, in addition to spreading by bird-dispersed seed.
Growing tips. Highly susceptible to black knot, which can kill branches and disfigure the plant if not pruned out promptly, plus leaf spot, powdery mildew, root rot, and fireblight; also attracts eastern tent caterpillars. A valuable pioneer species for erosion control on disturbed sites.
Companion planting. Shares black knot fungus (Apiosporina morbosa) with cultivated plums and cherries — wild chokecherry thickets near orchards are a major reservoir of reinfection.
Grow journal
Sign in to keep a dated log of when you planted, bloomed and harvested this plant.