Plant · P-464

Aronia Purple

Aronia x prunifolia

Purple chokeberry is a naturally occurring hybrid between red and black chokeberry, native to the eastern United States from Maine south to Georgia and west to Wisconsin and Illinois. Its purple-black fruit is too astringent to eat off the bush, so it gets cooked into jam, jelly, juice or syrup, or traditionally dried and worked into pemmican. Because it is a hybrid it won't come true from seed, so cuttings or divisions of a known plant are the reliable way to propagate it. It suckers from the roots into a spreading thicket on damp, low-lying ground, tolerates both wet and dry soil once established, and holds its fruit through much of the winter with little competition from wildlife.