6.
Ribes americanum
Miller, Gard. Dict. ed. 8. Ribes no. 4. 1768.
Wild black currant, gadellier d'Amérique
Plants
0.5-1.5 m.
Stems
erect to spreading, crisply puberulent to villous, glandular throughout with yellow, shiny, sessile, crystalline, round glands; spines at nodes absent; prickles on internodes absent.
Leaves:
petiole 1-7 cm, (equaling or shorter than blade), crisply puberulent to villous, with slender processes along proximal margins; blade pentangular, 3-5-lobed, cleft nearly 1/2 to midrib, (1.5-)2-7 cm, base broadly truncate to shallowly cordate, surfaces with amber, sessile glands, thickly villous at least abaxially or along abaxial veins, lobes broadly deltate, margins usually coarsely bicrenate-serrate, apex acute to bluntly acute.
Inflorescences
spreading to pendent, 6-15-flowered racemes, 1.5-5 cm, axis pubescent, flowers evenly spaced.
Pedicels
jointed, 0.1-2 mm, villous; bracts narrowly lanceolate, to 10 mm, villous to sparsely hairy.
Flowers:
hypanthium green, broadly tubular-campanulate, 3-4.5 mm, glabrous or sparsely villosulous; sepals not overlapping, usually reflexed, cream to greenish white, narrowly oblong-spatulate to nearly oblong, 4.5-5 mm; petals connivent, erect, whitish, oblong to oblong-obovate, not conspicuously revolute or inrolled, 2.5-3 mm; nectary disc not prominent; stamens nearly as long as petals; filaments expanded at base, 1 mm, glabrous; anthers cream, oval, 1 mm, apex with small-holed callus; ovary glabrous; styles connate nearly to stigmas, 6-8 mm, glabrous.
Berries
palatable when cooked, black, ovoid, 10 mm, glabrous, without resinous glands.
Flowering Apr-Jun. Swamps, stream banks, wet meadows, fens, moist ravines and canyons, open woods; 50-1700 m; Alta., Man., N.B., N.S., Ont., P.E.I., Que., Sask.; Colo., Conn., Del., D.C., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Ky., Maine, Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Mo., Mont., Nebr., N.H., N.J., N.Mex., N.Y., N.Dak., Ohio, Pa., R.I., S.Dak., Vt., Va., W.Va., Wis., Wyo.; introduced in Asia (n China).
Fresh material of
Ribes americanum
does not have the skunklike odor of
R. hudsonianum
and
R. nigrum
. The bracts are much longer than the jointed pedicels. The leaves and bracts bear fimbriate processes on the proximal margins that may be remnants of adnate stipules.
