92 GROSSULARIACEAE 



RIBES Linnaeus 

 The Currants 



The currants are unarmed shrubs with alternate, palmately 

 veined and usually also palmately lobed leaves. The inflores- 

 cence is several to many flowered, the flower pedicels are 

 jointed, and a small pair of bractlets often is present at the 

 nodes. The shrubs bear perfect flowers and these develop 

 into thin-skinned berries that never are spiny and may have or 

 be without glands. The fruit disarticulates from the pedicel 

 at the joints. 



The currants are represented in Illinois by a single native 

 species. 



RIBES AMERICANUM Miller 

 American Black Currant 



The American Black Currant, fig. 20, is an erect shrub, 

 growing 1 to 2]/^ feet high, with branches which bear neither 

 spines nor bristles. The leaves are nearly orbicular in outline 

 but 3-lobed, with the lower lobes sometimes so deeply cut that 

 the leaves appear 5-lobed. They are 1 to 3 inches wide, some- 

 what pubescent, and resinous dotted on the underside. The 

 margins are dentate-serrate, and the lobes are acute. 



Flowers are borne in pendulous, rather loose, pubescent 

 racemes, which arise from the axils of leaves on short fruiting 

 spurs. These flowers are greenish yellow and about one-third 

 inch long, and each has a linear, small bractlet. They stand 

 on pedicels that are much shorter than the flowers. The calyx 

 lobes are about as long as the tube of the corolla, oblong, 

 rounded at the apex, and more or less pubescent. The petals 

 and the stamens are a little shorter than the sepals. The fruit 

 matures in July and August from the flowers which appeared in 

 May. The berries are globose, black, smooth, and about 14 i"ch 

 in diameter. 



Distribution. — The American Black Currant is a woods- 

 inhabiting plant that grows from Nova Scotia to Manitoba and 

 south to Virginia, Iowa and Nebraska. In Illinois, it is most 

 frequent in the woods of the northern part of the state, inhabit- 

 ing there the boggy places along streams. Probably it grows 

 throughout the state but is rare southward. 



