Ribes diacanthum

What to Eat

Edible parts: Fruit

The fruit is eaten raw or used in cooking and has a sweetish-acid flavour suitable for dessert. It is small, measuring about 5mm in diameter.

Where to Find It

It is a cold temperate plant. In northern China it grows on sandy hills below 1,500 m above sea level.

Asia, Canada, China, Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, North America, North Korea, Russia, Siberia,

How to Identify

A shrub. It grows 2 m tall. It has small spines. The leaves are 3.5 cm across. They have 3 shallow blunt lobes. The leaves are shiny and have teeth. Flowers are separately male and female. They are greenish-yellow and in erect groups. The fruit are bright red.

How to Grow

Easily grown in a moisture retentive but well-drained loamy soil of at least moderate quality. Plants are quite tolerant of shade though do not fruit so well in such a position. Hardy to about -20°c. 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. Dioecious. Male and female plants must be grown if fruit and seed is required.

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 between 0 and 9°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, grow on in a cold frame through their first winter, and plant out in late spring the following year. Take cuttings of half-ripe wood, 10–15cm with a heel, in July or August in a frame. Cuttings of mature wood from 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

None known.

Other Uses

None known.

Ribes diacanthum, the Siberian currant, is an Asian species of currant. It is native to northeastern Asia (Russia, Mongolia, Korea, northeastern China (Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia)). The species is also sparingly naturalised in the Canadian Province of Manitoba, having escaped in the 1940s from an agricultural experiment station near Brandon. Ribes diacanthum is a shrub up to 2 meters (80 in) tall, dioecious (with male and female flowers on different plants). Flowers are yellow-green. Fruits are red, spherical, and reportedly good-tasting.

Notes

There are about 150 Ribes species.

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