Carried by 8 nurseries
View Availability at NurseryData provided by the participants of the Consortium of California Herbaria
View additional distribution information on the Jepson eflora
Ribes divaricatum is a species of currant known by several common names, including spreading gooseberry, coast black gooseberry, and wild gooseberry. It is native to the forests, woodlands, and coastal scrub of western North America from British Columbia to California. It is a shrub sometimes reaching 3 meters in height with woody branches with one to three thick brown thorns at leaf nodes. The leaves are generally palmate in shape and edged with teeth. The blades are up to 6 centimeters long and borne on petioles. The flower cluster is a small cluster of hanging flowers, each with reflexed purple-tinted green sepals and smaller, lighter petals encircling long, protruding stamens. The fruit is a berry up to a centimeter wide which is black when ripe. It is similar to Ribes lacustre and Ribes lobbi, but the former has smaller, reddish to maroon flowers and the latter has reddish flowers that resemble those of fuchsias and sticky leaves. The fruit was food for a number of Native American groups of the Pacific Northwest, and other parts of the plant, especially the bark, was used for medicinal purposes.
Shrub
6 - 11 ft Tall
3 ft Wide
Winter Deciduous
Red, Pink, Purple, Green
Spring
Deer resistant
Full Sun, Partial Shade
Low
Moderate
Fast
Moisture retentive but well-drained loamy soil of at least moderate quality.
Soil PH: 4.8 - 8.2
Bluffs
Coastal Sage Scrub, Foothill Woodland, Lodgepole Forest, Mixed Evergreen Forest, Red Fir Forest, Forest, Subalpine Forest, Yellow Pine Forest, Wetland-Riparian
Butterflies and moths supported
1 confirmed and 85 likely
Oreas Comma
Polygonia oreas
Milbert's Tortoiseshell
Aglais milberti