Allegheny Serviceberry

Size, growth and what to expect

Allegheny serviceberry is the juneberry, so called because its fruit ripens to dark purplish black in June. A young tree puts on roughly a foot and a half of height a year on an average site, the rate our growth estimator assumes for a medium grower. It reaches 15 to 25 feet tall and about as wide, and a single-trunked tree can reach 40 feet. It is fairly short-lived. A sapling bears its first fruit 2 to 3 years after planting.

White flowers open in April, before the leaves. Each fruit is about three eighths of an inch across and matches a blueberry in size, color and taste, and it is juicier than the fruit of downy serviceberry. Songbirds, ruffed grouse and small mammals strip the crop as soon as it ripens.

It grows wild from Newfoundland and southern Ontario south to Delaware, Kentucky and Iowa, and down the mountains to Georgia and Tennessee, in thickets, open woods and sheltered slopes. It resents drought.

How to grow Allegheny Serviceberry

Allegheny serviceberry does best where summers stay cool, in full sun or the light shade of taller trees. It wants an ordinary, evenly moist soil that drains. Give a multi-stemmed clump 12 to 15 feet of space.

Plant dormant bare-root saplings between leaf drop and bud break. Make the hole wide and shallow, twice the root spread, with the root flare level with the surface. Refill with plain soil, water well, and lay a mulch ring two or three inches deep that stops short of the stems. Stake only if the tree will not stand on its own. Seed needs three to four months of cold, damp storage. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in fall a quarter inch deep, or chill it in the refrigerator and sow in spring. Many seeds wait until the second spring to come up.

Serviceberry roots are shallow, so water weekly through the first two summers. Rabbits gnaw the smooth bark in winter and deer browse the tips, so use a wire guard for the first three years. Prune only to remove crossing stems or to shape a clump into a single trunk.

A single plant sets fruit, and birds will take the June crop before it fully ripens unless you net it. Serviceberry can show rust spots on leaves and fruit near junipers and red cedars.