Nantucket Serviceberry

Size, growth and what to expect

Nantucket serviceberry reaches 2 to 6 feet, usually 4 to 5 feet tall and wide in a garden, and a wild colony is often knee high. Our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, a foot and a half of height a year, since no source rates its speed.

Flowers open in late April or May, 6 to 8 to a short upright cluster, with white, spoon-shaped petals. Some petals carry tiny pollen sacs on their edges, a trait almost unknown among plants. The berries turn dark purple-blue in June and July, three eighths of an inch across and edible, and birds take them as they ripen. The leaves turn orange-red in fall.

It grows wild only on the coastal plain from Nova Scotia to Maryland, on sandplain grasslands, heaths, pine barrens and old fields. Its largest stands are on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. A few grow on Long Island, Staten Island and at Great Falls in Maryland, and NatureServe ranks it vulnerable.

How to grow Nantucket Serviceberry

Nantucket serviceberry wants full sun and a sandy or gravelly soil that drains sharply, dry to average in moisture. It is at home on a bank, a dune edge or an open field, and it is not a plant for wet ground or shade. Set plants 4 feet apart, and keep them 3 feet from a wall or a path, because the runners move outward every year.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the sandy soil back in, and keep a thin mulch clear of the stems. Seed needs three to four months of cold, damp storage. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in fall a quarter inch deep. For spring, hold it damp in the refrigerator for 90 to 120 days first. Many seeds wait until the second spring to come up. Some of the seed forms without pollination, and those seedlings match the parent.

Water weekly through the first summer, then only in a long drought, since a rooted colony on sand looks after itself. Rabbits and voles gnaw the thin stems in winter and deer browse the tips, so guard young plants with wire for the first two or three years. Prune only to take out dead stems, and cut back runners that stray past the bed.

A single plant sets fruit, since the species can set seed without pollination. Birds strip the berries as they turn blue in June and July, so net a few stems if you want a bowl. Rust spots can show near junipers and red cedars. Fire blight, leaf spot or powdery mildew can mark it in a wet year, and none of them is serious.