Little need be said here about the red currant, so well known in its cultivated form in British fruit gardens. It is an unarmed, spreading shrub with three- or five-lobed leaves, 2 to 4 in. across, heart-shaped at the base, very downy beneath, and with scattered hairs above, at least when young; stalk from half to twice as long as the blade. Flowers saucer-shaped, flattish, greenish, produced in recurved racemes from the joints of last year’s wood. Receptacle with a fleshy five-angled disk at the base, between the stamens and style. Fruits juicy, red and shining; white in a cultivated variety.
Native of western Europe, but probably not of Britain, where, however, it is widely naturalised, as it is elsewhere in the areas where it is cultivated. It is of little interest except in fruit gardens.
R. spicatum Robs. R. rubrum sensu many authors, not L. – Near to R. rubrum but the receptacle of the flowers broadly funnel-shaped or bowl-shaped, without a disk at the centre. Racemes more or less upright in the flowering stage. It varies in the amount of down on the undersurface of the leaves and inflorescence. Native of N. Europe, including Britain (where it occurs in Scotland and N. England), and of Siberia, etc. In many works this species appears under the name R. rubrum L., but Wilmott pointed out in 1918 that this name belongs properly to the cultivated red currant of W. Europe and the wild plants agreeing with it (Journ. Bot., Vol. 56, p. 22). This view is adopted here, as it is by D. A. Webb in Flora Europaea, Vol. 1 (1964), p. 383.
Perhaps not specifically distinct from R. spicatum is R. schlechtendalii Lange (R. pubescens (Swartz) Hedl.) with brownish flowers (greenish in R. spicatum), downy young stems, and leaves densely downy beneath. It is a native of W. Russia, Poland and parts of Scandinavia, and is cultivated for its fruits.
The taxonomic position of R. warszewiczii Jancz. is uncertain. It was described in 1904 from a plant growing in the Botanic Garden at Krakow, Poland, said to have been raised forty years previously from seeds received from Siberia. It has larger flowers than in R. spicatum, pinkish, with a suggestion of a disk in the receptacle, borne in pendulous racemes, and large, acid fruits darker in colour than those of a Morello cherry.
R. multiflorum Roem. & Kit. – This is one of the red currant group and, as regards its flowers, the most attractive; they are yellowish green, crowded up to forty together on slender, cylindrical, pendulous racemes, sometimes 4 or 5 in. long. When well furnished with these the shrub is quite ornamental. For the rest, it is vigorous, up to 6 ft high, and has stout branches – stouter perhaps than those of any other currant; leaves of the red currant shape, grey with down beneath. Sepals reflexed. Stamens and style exserted. Fruits roundish, red when ripe, about 3⁄8 in. wide. It is a native of the Balkans and Italy, and the parent of some late-fruiting commercial varieties cultivated in central Europe. It was introduced to Britain in about 1818. Bot. Mag., t. 2368.
R. triste Pall. – This is a widely distributed relative of the red currant, occurring in the colder parts of N. America and Russia. It is a shrub of laxer habit than R. rubrum, the leaves white with down beneath when young; flowers purplish; fruit red, small and hard. It is said to be pretty and graceful in blossom in the United States and Canada, where it ranges from Newfoundland to Alaska, with extensions southward along the mountains, and inhabits bogs and wet woods. In Russia it ranges from the Pacific to E. Siberia.
R. petraeum Wulfen – This is another of the red currant group, occurring in central Europe, the Pyrenees, etc., also in N. Africa. It has no value as an ornamental shrub, its flowers being green, suffused with purple, somewhat bell-shaped, in horizontal or slightly nodding racemes, 3 or 4 in. long. The leaves are more deeply lobed than in the common red currant, the lobes pointed. Fruits roundish, flattened somewhat at the end, red, very acid.