A year among the trees

Chapter 18: THE MISSOURI CURRANT.

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About This Book

The volume offers a seasonal tour of New England woodlands, combining natural history, species descriptions, and landscape observation. It profiles many native trees and shrubs, noting forms, foliage, and identifying features, and organizes scenes by seasons and habitats. Interspersed essays examine trees' relations to soil, water, climate, electricity, birds, and insects, and discuss their roles in health, shade, and ornament. Practical and aesthetic considerations mingle with reflections on poetic and folkloric associations, while guidance on planting, forest rotation, and the varied expressions of trees rounds out a handbook for both the curious walker and the practical planter.

THE MISSOURI CURRANT.

Among the flowering shrubs which are universally admired for the fragrance and beauty of their early blossoms, the Missouri Currant deserves more than a passing mention. Though introduced into New England since the beginning of the present century, it has become a universal favorite in our gardens, where it is cultivated chiefly for the agreeable odor of its flowers, resembling that of cloves, and penetrating the air on all still days in May. This shrub has a small leaf with irregular pointed lobes, turning to a pale crimson in autumn. The flowers are in small racemes like those of the common garden currant, but brighter in their hues, which are of a golden yellow, and producing only a few large berries of a pure shining black. This species is chiefly prized for its flowers, and is not cultivated for its fruit.