Description: Shrub or small tree with spreading rounded crown, showy white flowers, and large bright red berries.

Height: 9 m

Diameter: 0.2 m

Leaves: pinnately compound; 10-15 cm long. 15 (11-17) stalkless, oblong or oblong-lanceolate leaflets 3-7 cm long, 1.2-2.5 cm wide; long-pointed; serrate, sometimes rather jaggedly toothed. Glabrous and bluish-green above, paler and initially slightly downy beneath; turning orange in autumn.

Shoots: reddish-brown, stout, fairly densely lenticellate, more or less downy when young.

Winter buds: dark crimson to almost black; glutinous; outer scales glabrous except for a few marginal hairs.

Bark: dark grey; smooth or scaly.

Flowers: 10 mm wide; with 5 white rounded petals; in terminal upright flattened clusters 5-10 cm wide; in late spring.

Fruit: 10-12 mm in diameter; like small apples; bright red skin; bitter pulp; with few seeds; many, in clusters, maturing in early autumn.

Habitat: Moist soils of valleys and slopes.

Range: W. Ontario east to Newfoundland and S. Greenland, south to Connecticut, and west to NE. Iowa; to 600 m.

A handsome ornamental, with showier red fruit than many of its relatives.

Information: Audubon (1980), Bean IV (1989)

Source: Four seedlings from berries of specimens at Harlow Carr gerdens (Northern Horticultural Society) in Harrogate.

Sown: April 1995, germinated 1996.

Planted: Southern edge of big triangle at south of U.S. area - near field boundary stile, as hedge components, first in spring 1998, second 1998.09.30 and the last two 1999.05.10.

Progress: The location renders these trees very vulnerable to browsing by cows over the fence from the field to the south, though two are somewhat sheltered by a thorny briar. This got trampled down after a year or two, leaving all four trees exposed, though the further east had had time to put on some height first. Given this vulnerability, progress has been pretty good, so far. By 2004.09.27, east to west, the heights are 2.7m, 1.5m, 1.2m and 1.2m.

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