Plant · P-448

Red Currant

Ribes rubrum

Red currant is a cool-climate shrub from western Europe that grows as a tidy multistemmed clump rather than suckering outward. A mature bush yields three to ten pounds of pleasantly acid berries a year, good raw or cooked into pies and jam, though the fresh leaves carry hydrogen cyanide and are never eaten. It blooms very early, so a spring frost can wipe out the crop, and it sunburns and stalls once air temperatures push past 85 F.