Photo: Ruff tuff cream puff — CC0 · 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.
Grown as much for its clove-scented, bright yellow, tubular spring flowers and good fall color as for fruit. The named cultivar 'Crandall' produces large, glossy black berries that are notably sweeter and less musky than black currant — good fresh-eating as well as jam.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–8
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- June–Aug
- Mature size
- Upright deciduous shrub 1.8–2.4 m, suckering; clove-scented in flower
- Light
- Partial to full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- American Midwest and Great Plains — Minnesota and South Dakota south through Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, all west of the Mississippi. Widely planted beyond that and escaped in the eastern United States and in Europe, but not native there.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 1–2 yrs
- Growth speed
- Moderate to fast, depending on source.
- Spacing
- 180 cm (71 in) apart — about 3.2 m² (35 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Ovate to rounded, 3(-5)-lobed, coarsely toothed, blue-green to medium green, hairy along the veins.
- Root system
- Suckering — spreads by root suckers to form clumps.
- Fruit description
- Berries about 8–10 mm, smooth-skinned, purple-black to black; the best forms are sweet with real tartness.
- Propagation
- Hardwood cuttings are close to foolproof: take pencil-thick shoots about 20–25 cm long in late autumn, push two-thirds into free-draining ground outdoors and leave them a year. Layering a low branch works too. Seed needs several months of cold stratification and is only worth it for breeding.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile
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
Growing tips. Heat- and drought-tolerant, hardy to zone 2, and often nearly spineless — an easy, low-input shrub. Current taxonomy (POWO) actually treats this name as a synonym of Ribes aureum var. villosum rather than a fully distinct species, though it's still sold and grown under "Ribes odoratum" throughout the US nursery trade.
Companion planting. A confirmed blister rust host — a 2014 peer-reviewed report documented the fungus on the 'Crandall' cultivar in Indiana. New Jersey prohibits it statewide by name ("clove currant"); other states have no restriction. Check current local rules.
Grow journal
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