Granite Gooseberry

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, like our wild black currant, about a foot and a half a year. It makes a spreading shrub of 2 to 10 feet, often much shorter, with erect to arching stems that root at the tips. Each node carries up to three spines, and the rounded leaves, about an inch long, have three lobes.

White flowers hang singly or in clusters of up to four from March to May, with white sepals and long stamens. The berry ripens in June and July, greenish to reddish purple, a third to half an inch across, smooth or glandular-hairy.

It grows wild in scattered stands from Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama west to Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Its home is rich, rocky deciduous woods and bouldery slopes, from about 650 to 2,600 feet above sea level.

How to grow Granite Gooseberry

Granite gooseberry grows in the part shade or shade of deciduous woods, on rocky or bouldery slopes that drain well and stay moist. Plant it 3 feet from a wall and set plants 5 feet apart. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, in late fall or winter, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch ring clear of the stems. It is sown as other gooseberries are. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in fall, an eighth to a quarter inch deep. Most currant and gooseberry seed comes up the spring after sowing.

Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short, and keep a mulch of leaves over the roots. Its arching stems root where they touch the soil, so give it room to widen into a patch.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. Like every currant and gooseberry, it can host white pine blister rust, which kills white pines and other five-needled pines. The spores that carry the rust from gooseberry to pine rarely travel more than 900 feet, so keep it at least that far from white pines. Several states restrict or ban planting currants and gooseberries for this reason, among them Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and North Carolina, so check your state's rules first.