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Ribes americanum
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Ribes americanum' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Common Names
- American black currant
Synonyms
- R. floridum L'Hérit.
- R. missouriense Hort.
Other taxa in genus
- Ribes alpinum
- Ribes ambiguum
- Ribes × beatonii
- Ribes bracteosum
- Ribes cereum
- Ribes ciliatum
- Ribes curvatum
- Ribes diacantha
- Ribes fasciculatum
- Ribes glandulosum
- Ribes henryi
- Ribes lacustre
- Ribes laurifolium
- Ribes leptanthum
- Ribes lobbii
- Ribes longeracemosum
- Ribes maximowiczianum
- Ribes menziesii
- Ribes nigrum
- Ribes niveum
- Ribes odoratum
- Ribes orientale
- Ribes pinetorum
- Ribes roezlii
- Ribes rubrum
- Ribes sanguineum
- Ribes speciosum
- Ribes tenue
- Ribes trilobum
- Ribes uva-crispa
- Ribes valdivianum
- Ribes viburnifolium
- Ribes wolfii
This shrub is unarmed, and closely akin to the common black currant, which it resembles in having three- or five-lobed leaves with a coarse, irregular toothing and deeply heart-shaped base, and in possessing the same heavy odour, due to yellowish glands on the lower surface. The fruit also is black. The American species, however, is quite distinct in the flowers; these are nearly twice as long, more tapering and funnel-shaped, and yellow. Moreover, the bract from the axil of which each flower springs on the raceme is longer than the stalk. (In R. nigrum it is small and much shorter than the flower-stalk.)
Native of eastern N. America from Nova Scotia to Virginia, and west to the Rocky Mountains; introduced in 1729. As a garden shrub the only quality which recommends this currant is that its foliage becomes suffused with brilliant hues of crimson and yellow in autumn.