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- ›Ribes
spreading gooseberry
Ribes divaricatum
Ribes divaricatum is a species in the genus Ribes found in the forests, woodlands, and coastal scrub of western North America from British Columbia to California. The three accepted varieties have various common names which include the word "gooseberry". Other common names include coast black gooseberry, wild gooseberry, Worcesterberry, or spreading-branched gooseberry.
From the article Ribes divaricatum on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
Ribes divaricatum is a shrub sometimes reaching 3 metres (10 feet) in height with woody branches with one to three thick brown spines at leaf nodes. The leaves are borne on petioles, up to 6 centimetres (2+1⁄4 inches) long and 2.5–6.5 cm (1–2+1⁄2 in) wide. They are generally palmate in shape, 3–5 lobed and edged with teeth. The inflorescence is a small cluster of hanging flowers, each with reflexed purple-tinted green sepals and smaller, white to red petals encircling long, protruding stamens. The fruit is a sweet-tasting purplish-black berry up to 1 cm (1⁄2 in) wide.
Similar species. It is similar to Ribes lacustre and R. lobbii, but the former has smaller, reddish to maroon flowers and the latter has reddish flowers that resemble those of fuchsias and sticky leaves.
At the table
The berries are ripe when black and edible. The fruit was food for a number of Native American groups of the Pacific Northwest, and other parts of the plant, especially the bark, was used for medicinal purposes.
Wikipedia: “Uses”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Ribes divaricatum in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 53448.