Photo: Dave Powell, USDA Forest Service — Public domain · 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.
Fruit is a tart, juicy red drupe, edible raw once fully ripe — the flesh is pleasant but each has a large, flattened stone and a musky odor that some find off-putting, so it is more often cooked into jelly or sauce than eaten out of hand.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–6
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Aug–Sept
- Mature size
- Shrub 2–4 m; containerable when young
- Light
- Partial to shade (boreal understory)
- Soil pH
- 5.5–7.0
- Environment
- Boreal
- Native range
- Boreal and subarctic North America, from Labrador and Newfoundland west to Alaska, south through the Rockies to Colorado and along the Pacific coast to Oregon.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Slow to moderate
- Spacing
- 200 cm (79 in) apart — about 4 m² (43 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Opposite, shallowly 3-lobed and palmately veined on new growth (maple-like, coarsely toothed, hairy beneath), while later-season leaves are often unlobed and lance-elliptic.
- Root system
- Shallow and rhizomatous, suited to thin boreal forest-floor soils; spreads short distances by rhizome rather than deep taproots.
- Fruit description
- Small globose to ovoid drupes, 8–12 mm, ripening bright translucent red in loose drooping clusters; juicy and acidic with a single large flattened seed and a musky, somewhat skunky aroma that fades with cooking or after frost.
- Propagation
- By seed (needs a two-stage stratification: 3–9 months warm at roughly 20°C followed by about 3 months cold near 4°C before germinating), by softwood cuttings taken in midsummer and treated with rooting hormone under mist, or by layering low branches.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile but BETTER WITH A PARTNER — plant 2 cultivars
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 slowly by shallow rhizomes and by layering where low branches touch soil, gradually forming loose colonies in boreal forest understory rather than aggressive suckering thickets.
Growing tips. Very cold-hardy (to roughly USDA zone 2) and adapted to cool, shaded, moist woodland conditions; it struggles in hot, dry, or exposed sites. Fruit set improves with a second unrelated seedling nearby for cross-pollination, and berries are best picked after the first light frost, which softens the musky edge.
Grow journal
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