Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Aronia arbutifolia (L.) Elliott
- Family: Rose (Rosaceae)
- Flowering: March-May
- Field Marks: This species differs from other chokeberries by its bright red fruits, its red, gland-tipped teeth of the leaves, and its usually densely hairy lower leaf surface.
- Habitat: Swamps, bogs, along streams, moist thickets, wet prairies, low pinewoods, seepage slopes.
- Habit: Shrub up to 12 feet tall, spreading by underground runners, often forming colonies.
- Stems: Rather slender, densely hairy, particularly when young.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, oval to elliptic, usually rounded at the tip, tapering to the base, finely toothed with red-tipped glandular teeth, densely hairy on the lower surface, up to 4 inches long, up to 2 inches wide.
- Flowers: Several in round-topped clusters, each flower white, up to 1/2 inch long; buds of flowers pink.
- Sepals: 5, green, forming a short tube, the lobes glandular.
- Petals: 5, white at maturity, free from each other, rounded at the tip.
- Stamens: 15-20, usually with pink anthers.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior; styles 5, united basally.
- Fruits: Bright red, spherical, up to 1/4-1/3 inch in diameter, persisting throughout much of the winter.
Previous Species -- Hercules Club (Aralia spinosa)
Return to Species List -- Group 5
Next Species -- Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa)
