164 THE RIBES FAMILY. [ Rides. 
I. RIBES, RIBES. 
Shrubs, with alternate, palmately veined or lobed leaves, no stipules, 
and axillary flowers in racemes, or rarely solitary. Calyx adnate to the 
ovary at the base, the limb divided into 4 or 5 segments. Petals as many, 
very small and scale-like, inserted at the base of the segments of the calyx. 
Stamens as many. Ovary inferior, 1-celled, with many ovules inserted on 
2 parietal placentas. Style , deeply divided into 2 or 4 lobes.“ Fruit a 
berry, filled with juicy pulp, i in which the seeds are suspended by long 
stalks. Albumen horny, with a small, straight embryo. 
A genus spread over the whole of the temperate regions of the northern 
hemisphere. The species are most numerous in north-western America, 
and a small number extend down the Andes to the southern extremity of 
that continent. 
Stems prickly. Peduncles 1- or 2-flowered . ‘ oe - 1 BR. Grossularia. 
Stems unarmed. Flowers in racemes. 
Flowers all complete. 
Leaves inodorous. Pedicels all short. Fruit red or white 2, R. rubrum, 
Leaves strongly scented. Lowest pedicels of each raceme 
longer than the upper ones. akar ae ; 4. RB. nigrum. 
Flowers dicecious. Fruit red. . : : . 3. BR. alginum. 
The Scarlet Ribes and several others, now frequent in our shrubberies, 
are natives of north-western America. 
1, R. Grossularia, Linn. (fig. 370). Gooseberry Ribes.—A much 
branched but rather weak shrub, 3 or 4 feet high, with numerous palmately 
spreading prickles, either single or 2 or 3 together. Leaves small, orbi- 
cular, palmately divided into 3 or 5 crenated lobes, more or less hairy on 
both sides. Flowers green, hanging singly or in pairs on short pedicels 
from little tufts of young leaves. Calyx-tube shortly campanulate, the seg- 
ments oblong, about twice the length of the petals. Berry of the wild 
plant rather small and yellowish, sprinkled with stiff hairs, but in cultivation 
varying much in size and colour, and often quite glabrous. 
In thickets, open woods, and hedges, in the rocky parts of central and 
southern Europe, and western Asia. In Britain, well established in many 
places, in hedges, and even wilder places, but, except in the north of Eng- 
land, scarcely indigenous, having been abundantly cultivated in cottage 
gardens for several centuries. Il. early spring. 
2. R. rubrum, Linn. (fig. 371). Currant Ribes, Red and White 
Currants.—An erect, branching shrub, 3 or 4 feet high, without prickles, 
Leaves on rather long stalks, much larger and thinner than those of the 
Gooseberry, with 3 or 5 rather short and broad-toothed lobes, glabrous, or 
more frequently sprinkled with a few minute hairs on the upper surface, 
and more or less downy underneath, Flowers small, greenish-white, several 
together in axillary racemes at the base of the year’s-shoots. These 
racemes are either erect or pendulous when in flower, but almost always 
pendulous when in fruit; the pedicels all short, and do not commence at the 
very base of the raceme, as in R. nigrum, each pedicel being in the axil of 
a small bract. Calyx-segments broadly spreading, obovate, or rounded, 
twice the length of the small petals, Berries red when wild, varying in 
cultivation from red to white. . 
In rocky woods, in northern and central Europe and Russian Asia, ex- — 
tending to the Arctic Circle, but replaced in southern Europe and central 
