northern redcurrant

Photo: bottomdollar99730 — CC BY 2.0 · source

Survives zone 2 through 6

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

A cold-hardy, wetland-loving wild red currant found across boreal North America and northeast Asia — tart fruit used for pies and preserves, and historically valuable to breeders for introducing cold-hardiness into cultivated redcurrant lines. Genuinely thin on culinary documentation compared to R. rubrum.

Hardiness

Zone 2–6

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

June–Aug

Mature size

Sprawling deciduous shrub 0.3–1 m, the stems often reclining and rooting

Light

Partial to full sun (woodland/thicket)

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Boreal

Native range

Eastern and central Canada and the northern US, plus northeast Asia (Russia, China, Korea, Japan) — a wide circumboreal range.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

1–2 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate — a low, sprawling shrub reaching only about 0.4–1 m tall.

Spacing

120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

3- to 5-lobed, coarsely toothed, sparsely hairy above and softly hairy beneath.

Root system

Trailing, reclining stems that root at the nodes and tips rather than forming a distinct root crown.

Fruit description

Small (6–10 mm), shiny, smooth, bright red berries with a tart flavor and many seeds.

Propagation

Seed (cold-stratify ~3 months) or half-ripe cuttings with a heel, taken July-August.

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.