Black chokeberries provide beauty and nutrition

I recall lecturing to a woody plants class about chokeberries, native shrubs with fruits supposedly so astringent that they are shunned by the birds, hence the common name. After class, I walked down to the basement of Deering Hall to meet with my graduate students – grad student offices everywhere are in a corner of the basement – and took a chair opposite the window, with a view upward into daylight and the scarlet red autumn leaves of a red chokeberry, Aronia arbutifolia. As we talked, a robin landed on a branch and began to devour the overripe berries. It had been a long, deep-snow winter. Any port in a storm, I thought.

The next spring I planted several red chokeberries, the cultivar ‘Brilliantissima,’ around the front porch of my Orono home. The site was sunny enough to keep them from growing too leggy, and for the next several autumns they rewarded me with brilliant scarlet leaves and small, applelike, glossy red fruits that persisted through the winter. Sure enough, as winter closed, the berries disappeared. I amended my lecture notes.

The red chokeberry is arguably not native to Maine, its northern range extending no farther east than western Vermont, according to most authorities. Greater sins have been committed, however, in the name of bringing scarlet leaves to autumn landscapes; the popular burning bush, Euonymus alatus, for example, is native to northeast Asia and central China and is now considered to be invasive, escaping from cultivation and establishing populations in the wild.

The black chokeberry, A. melanocarpa, is native throughout Maine, growing in bogs, swamps, behind the dunes, on cliffs and in old fields. It has a broad range of tolerance for different soils, from wet to dry, and is very tolerant of seasonal flooding. In wet areas it is associated with buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis, steeplebush, Spiraea tomentosa, and winterberry holly, Ilex verticillata, a group of native shrubs that I often recommend for pond-side plantings.

Black chokeberry grows from 3 to 6 feet tall, half the height of red chokeberry, with purple-red autumn foliage and black or blackish purple berries that drop to the ground in late fall. Gamebirds and songbirds, as well as small mammals, are known to eat the fruits.

A third species, purplefruit chokeberry, A. prunifolia, can be found growing along the entire coast of Maine and inland across the southern third of the state. Some authorities consider this to be a natural hybrid of the red- and black-fruited species, but this is hard to understand if the red-fruited species is missing from Maine flora. The berries of this species are deep purple in color.

The flowers of all chokeberries are hawthornlike, short-lived, with white to pinkish white or purple-tinged petals. The red anthers provide a spot of color in late May.

I believe that the black chokeberry has potential as a small fruit producer for the home gardener. Plants five years old will produce 20 to 30 pounds of fruits a year, and harvests of 50 pounds per year from older plants have been reported. Several cultivars have been selected for fruit production, including ‘Nero’ and ‘Viking,’ both developed in Europe and now being grown commercially in the United States, both in the Midwest and Northwest.

Fruits of black chokeberry have been found to be three times as rich in antioxidants as blueberries. While too astringent to be eaten fresh, they make excellent juices, jellies, sauces and syrups, and they can be added to baked goods.

I think it is time to take a serious look at chokeberries as ornamental shrubs and as small fruit producers. In the right landscape spot, they can do double duty.

Readers interested in sources for the cultivars of black chokeberry mentioned above should contact me by e-mail. I will be happy to pass this information along.

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