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Ribes alpinum L.

Mountain Currant

Modern name

Ribes alpinum L.

A deciduous unarmed shrub, reaching in gardens 6 to 9 ft in height and as much or more in diameter, of dense, close habit; young twigs shining, and at first more or less glandular. Leaves broadly ovate or roundish, three- sometimes five-lobed, the lobes coarsely toothed, the base straight or heart-shaped, with five radiating veins; upper surface with scattered bristly hairs, the lower one usually shining and more or less hairy on the veins, 12 to 112 in. long and wide; stalk glandular-downy, 14 to 12 in. long. Flowers unisexual, the sexes nearly always on separate plants, produced in the axils of bracts longer than the flower-stalk, greenish yellow; the males up to thirty together on small, erect, glandular racemes 1 to 112 in. long, the females fewer, and on racemes half as long. Fruits red, not palatable.

Native of Europe from N. England and Scandinavia to N. Spain, central Italy and Bulgaria, but rather patchily distributed and confined to the mountains in the southern part of its range; also of the Atlas and the Caucasus. In the British Isles it is a local species, found here and there in northern England and Wales, usually on limestone; it is abundant in woods near Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. Although commonly under 6 ft high, there were tree-like plants 15 ft high of this species in an old hedge on the east front terrace of the old hall at Troutbeck, reputed to be 300 years old.

Although this currant has no special beauty of flower or fruit it makes a very neat and pleasing shrub, admirable for shady places. Occasionally plants with perfect flowers may be found.

cv. ‘Aureum’ (‘Osborn’s Dwarf Golden’). – Leaves yellow throughout the summer, habit as in ‘Pumilum’, of which it may have been a branch-sport. First Class Certificate when shown by Osborn’s nursery, Fulham, in 1881 (Gard. Chron., Vol. 16 (1881), p. 333) as R. alpinum var. pumilum subvar. aureum or Osborn’s Dwarf Golden Ribes; R. alpinum var. aureum Nichols., in Dict. Gard., Vol. III (1887), p. 304). It colours best in full sun.

cv. ‘Laciniatum’. – Leaves more deeply lobed and toothed than in the type.

cv. ‘Pumilum’. – A dwarf variety with smaller leaves, 2 to 3 ft high but more in diameter; a very neat bush. It is female, though some flowers appear to have fertile stamens. It was described by Lindley in 1827; the original plant had grown in Miller’s nursery, Bristol, for many years, but was of unknown origin.

cv. ‘Pumilum Aureum’. – This appears to have been similar to ‘Osborn’s Dwarf Golden’ and possibly represents the same clone; it was described in Belgium three years before Osborn’s nursery exhibited their plant (Pynaert in Rev. Hort. Belg., Vol. 4 (1878), p. 233), as R. alpinum pumilum aureum; R. alpinum var. aureum Rehd. (1902).

The so-called var. ‘sterile’ appears to be merely the normal male-flowered plant. None of the forms of R. alpinum need a rich soil. They retain the neat, compact habit which is their greatest merit, in rather poor soil.


Ribes alpinum

Ribes alpinum

Genus

Ribes

Other species in the genus