Photo: Stickpen — Public domain · source
Survives zone 8 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Grown for its aromatic, glossy evergreen foliage and rare ability to thrive in dry shade under oaks, not for its fruit — the entire horticultural literature treats this as a native landscape/groundcover plant. Fruit is edible but small and incidental.
- Hardiness
- Zone 8–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- June–Aug
- Mature size
- Low spreading evergreen shrub 0.9–1.5 m tall by 2–3 m wide — the standard choice for dry shade under oaks
- Light
- Partial to shade
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0
- Environment
- Chaparral
- Native range
- Extremely restricted in the wild — only two known native populations, on Santa Catalina Island (California's Channel Islands) and near the San Diego County/Baja California border; reportedly rare/declining there.
- Status
- Ornamental
- Years to fruit
- 1–2 yrs
- Growth speed
- Moderate to fast, spreading by layering into a wide groundcover mat over a few years.
- Spacing
- 180 cm (71 in) apart — about 3.2 m² (35 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Leathery, glossy dark green, oval, un-lobed leaves with reddish veining, aromatic citrus-scented sticky glands when crushed.
- Root system
- Low, spreading, trailing stems that root at the tips rather than forming a deep taproot.
- Fruit description
- Small (5–8 mm), red, round berries — specific taste and texture aren't well documented.
- Propagation
- Seed (cold-stratify 2-3 months) or semi-ripe cuttings; stems also root naturally where they touch soil as the plant spreads.
- 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.
Growing guide
Growing tips. One of the few genuinely useful dry-shade plants — thrives under oaks with little water once established. Root rot from overwatering is the main cultivation hazard; less cold-hardy than most of the genus (roughly to -5°C).
Companion planting. Blister rust status is entirely undocumented for this species — it's a minor evergreen ornamental rarely discussed in the rust literature, which focuses on fruiting/commercial species.
Grow journal
Sign in to keep a dated log of when you planted, bloomed and harvested this plant.