Miccosukee 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 shrub 2 to 5 feet tall with erect or arching stems that root where they touch the ground. Each node carries two or three spines up to about 5/8 inch long, and the small leaves have three lobes. The leaves drop in summer, and new ones come in fall and last through the winter.

Pale greenish flowers hang singly or in pairs on long stalks from late February into April, with cream sepals swept back and long stamens tipped in pink. The fruit ripens in April and May, a round berry about half an inch across, covered in gland-tipped spines. Cotton mice eat the fruit.

It grows wild only on the shaded slopes of mixed hardwood and beech and magnolia forests, over limestone, in Jefferson County, Florida, and McCormick County, South Carolina. Where it grows it is abundant, with thousands of clumps.

How to grow Miccosukee Gooseberry

Miccosukee gooseberry grows in filtered light or shade under hardwoods, and it is not found in full sun. It wants the moist but well-drained sandy loam of rich hardwood forest, and in the wild it grows over limestone. Poorly drained ground and crowding by other plants hold it back. Plant it 3 feet from a wall and set plants 3 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. Its seed is hard to raise, and laboratory tests with many chilling and scarifying treatments failed. Whole ripe fruits pressed partly into bare mineral soil outdoors in July have come up the next spring. Seed left in fruit to rot on potting soil in a greenhouse has also sprouted, though sparingly.

Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short, and keep privet, Japanese honeysuckle and other invasive plants away from it. Deer browse it and feral hogs root it up, so fence young plants where either is about.

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. White peach scale and spider mites turn up on wild plants without harming them. Saplings are shipped only in state and otherwise pickup only.