stink currant

Photo: Walter Siegmund (talk) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 6 through 9

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 pungent, musky-skunky foliage smell. Small waxy blue-black berries in long hanging clusters were eaten fresh or dried by some Pacific Northwest Indigenous groups, but this is fundamentally a wild woodland species, not a refined eating currant.

Hardiness

Zone 6–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

June–Aug

Mature size

Robust deciduous shrub 1–3 m, occasionally to 4 m

Light

Full to partial shade — moist-to-wet, acidic streambank and forest soil, not the sunny position that suits most of the genus.

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Southeastern Alaska to Mendocino County, California, mostly west of the Cascade crest.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

1–2 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate, reaching about 2.5 m at maturity.

Spacing

180 cm (71 in) apart — about 3.2 m² (35 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Large (5–20 cm), palmately lobed leaves cut into 5 or 7 lobes over half their length, foul-smelling when crushed.

Root system

Shallow and fibrous, the bulk of it in the top 30–45 cm and spreading wider than the bush is tall. Two consequences worth planning for: it dries out quickly in a hot summer, so mulch and water rather than cultivate around it, and low branches that touch the ground will often layer themselves, which is the easiest way to get a new plant.

Fruit description

Small (~5 mm), blue-black berries with a whitish bloom, borne in long 15–30 cm clusters; mealy rather than juicy, with a mild blackcurrant flavor and slight bitterness — only fair to poor eating quality.

Propagation

Seed (sow ripe in autumn, cold-stratify ~3 months) or cuttings — semi-hardwood in midsummer, hardwood in late winter.

Pollination

Hermaphrodite flowers, insect-pollinated. No self-compatibility study for this species specifically: cultivated currants and gooseberries are largely self-fruitful, but controlled work on wild western Ribes found several species outright self-sterile, so a single plant is not a safe assumption. Plant two.

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.