Ribes cereum

What to Eat

Edible parts: Flowers, Fruit, Leaves

The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked, though large quantities can cause nausea and reports on its quality range from insipid and rubbery to highly esteemed. It can be used to make pemmican, jellies, jams, sauces, and pies, or dried for later use. Young leaves are also edible. The flowers can be eaten raw and have a sweet flavour.

Known Hazards

Where to Find It

It is a temperate plant. It grows on subalpine slopes and clearings in the Rocky Mountains. It suits hardiness zones 5-9.

Australia, Canada, North America, USA,

How to Identify

A shrub. It grows 0.9-1.8 m high and spreads 0.9 m wide. It has smooth stems. It loses its leaves during the year. The leaves are rounded or kidney shaped. They have 3-5 lobes. They are downy and have shallow teeth along the edge. The flowers are white or pale green and hang down. The fruit are shiny and red.

How to Grow

Easily grown in a moisture retentive but well-drained loamy soil of at least moderate quality. Requires a sunny position. Hardy to about -20°c. A very ornamental and free-flowering plant. Often cultivated for its edible fruit in N. America. It is disease-resistant and is being used in modern blackcurrant breeding programmes. Plants can harbour a stage of 'white pine blister rust', so they should not be grown in the vicinity of pine trees. Plants in this genus are notably susceptible to honey fungus. Related to R. viscosissimum.

Propagation: Seed is best sown as soon as it is ripe in autumn in a cold frame. Stored seed requires 4–5 months of cold stratification at -2 to 0°c and should be sown as early in the year as possible. Under normal storage conditions seed can remain viable for 17 years or more. Prick out seedlings into individual pots when large enough to handle and grow on in a cold frame for their first winter, planting out in late spring the following year. Cuttings of half-ripe wood, 10–15cm with a heel, can be taken in July/August in a frame. Cuttings of mature wood of the current year's growth, preferably with a heel of the previous year's growth, can be taken November to February in a cold frame or sheltered bed outdoors.

Medicinal Uses

An infusion of the inner bark has been used as a wash for sore eyes. The fruit has been eaten in quantity as an emetic and has also been used to treat diarrhoea.

Other Uses

None known.

Ribes cereum is a species of currant known by the common names wax currant and squaw currant; the pedicellare variety is known as whisky currant. The species is native to western North America.

Other Information

It is popular.

Notes

There are about 150 Ribes species.

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