Flowering Currant: A Showy Shower of Pink

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Here’s this week’s wildflower tidbit. Keep following along and you’ll soon know local flora like a pro.

This week, Cheryl Lisin of the Lost Coast Interpretive Association (like the Facebook page here--you’ll be delighted by beautiful photos showing up in your status) describes the wild currant.

She writes,

One of the showiest of our native shrubs, flowering currant, or Ribes sanguineum, blooms in early spring. The pink flowers appear about the same time as the plant leafs out with bright, spring green leaves.

wild currantIn summer, waxy purple berries form, which are edible. If growing in dry, sunny locations, flowering currant goes summer dormant in order to to survive the dry season.

Flowering currant is a beautiful plant for the garden, where it It thrives in partial shade with little summer water. It is native to many habitats in northern and central western California.

Currants and gooseberries, like the Sierra gooseberry, share the same genus, Ribes. The two can be distinguished by the berries, which are smooth and waxy in currants and spiny in gooseberries. Both are in the Gooseberry Family, Grossulariaceae.

 Got wildflowers to share? Upload them in the comment section for the rest of us to enjoy, please.
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Tulip Torpedo
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Tulip Torpedo
9 years ago

Love it. Any one seeing dogwood flowers. I will post some flowers I see today.

N Judah
Guest
N Judah
9 years ago

I think it’s too early for dogwood, but bloom times for everything are all topsy- turvy now, so anything goes. I lived in Virginia for part of my childhood and the woods by my house were full of them. So lovely. It’s Virginia’s state flower, I think.

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
9 years ago

Here is a currant from our yard

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
9 years ago

Native Fuscia B below

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
9 years ago

a

N Judah
Guest
N Judah
9 years ago
Reply to  Tulip Torpedo

A trillium or wake – robin. Edible and medicinal. It was revered by Native American women and used for women’s health problems.

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
8 years ago
Reply to  N Judah

Thanks for that. Would they boil the tuber? Or what

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
9 years ago

b

guest (NOT the other one)
Guest
guest (NOT the other one)
9 years ago
Reply to  Tulip Torpedo

The berries that form on these fuchsias (as well as on other varieties) make for some amazing jam….

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
8 years ago
Reply to  Kym Kemp

Maybe like our huckle berries. Those maybe my favorite pie definitely if we are talking Native Plants. Got to say cherry pie for favorite fruit pie. Blackberry is pretty good as well. A fuchsia pie I will have to try.

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
9 years ago

Bleeding Heart

N Judah
Guest
N Judah
9 years ago
Reply to  Tulip Torpedo

I dug up some of these by a small waterfall in the woods. They spread easily, but not invasively so. I love their name. Nice collection of photos. Thanks!

Tulip Torpedo
Guest
Tulip Torpedo
8 years ago
Reply to  N Judah

Thank you as well ,good info

G Espinoza
Guest
G Espinoza
8 years ago

Dragon’s Mouth Orchid Arethusa bulbosa.

G Espinoza
Guest
G Espinoza
8 years ago

White Fawn Lily – i think.

Mary Ann
Guest
Mary Ann
5 years ago
Reply to  G Espinoza

Some of these were just blooming on Showers Pass Road east of Kneeland. I agree with your ID.