Photo: Bob Gutowski, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Red Chokeberry

Aronia arbutifolia

Also called Photinia pyrifolia.

A tall, suckering shrub of bogs and swamps with white spring flowers, glossy red fruit that hangs into winter and blazing red fall leaves.

EdibleFall colorTolerates wet soilWildlife valueShowy flowersBears youngWinter interestErosion control

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 6–12 ft
USDA zones: 3–9
Growth rate: Slow
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: Sandy barrens, the coast, swamps and wet flats
Native range: 25 states and the District of Columbia, north to Maine, south to Florida and west to Texas
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Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia
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Red chokeberry is a multi-stemmed shrub of wet ground that spreads into colonies. Its glossy red fruit stays plump and bright into winter, while black chokeberry's shrivels and drops soon after ripening. The raw berries are astringent, but sweeter than black chokeberry's, and they make a firm jelly. Ohio lists it as endangered. On a bank its spreading colony helps hold the soil. Plant a row along a wet ditch or in a rain garden, where the red fruit and red leaves carry color into winter.

Size, growth and what to expect

Red chokeberry grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. It makes an upright, vase-shaped clump 6 to 12 feet tall and 3 to 6 feet wide.

Clusters of white to pale pink flowers with red anthers open in April and May. The glossy red fruit, a quarter to a third of an inch across, ripens from September to November and hangs on into January. Birds eat it mostly in mid to late winter. The leaves turn bright red in fall, as bright as burning bush.

It grows wild from Nova Scotia and southern Ontario to Florida and east Texas. Its home is swamps, wet thickets, bogs, fens, pocosins and wet pine flatwoods. NatureServe ranks it critically imperiled in Ohio and Oklahoma, and no specimen confirms it in Maine.

How to grow Red Chokeberry

Red chokeberry grows in full sun or part shade, and it flowers and fruits best in sun. It takes most soils, from boggy ground and occasional flooding to dry soil once rooted. Set plants 3 feet apart for a hedge, or up to 6 feet apart as single shrubs, and keep them 3 feet from a wall. It stays small enough to grow within 15 feet of overhead wires.

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 native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Clean the seed from the ripe fruit. Sow it outdoors in fall, three eighths of an inch deep. For spring, hold it damp in the refrigerator for 90 days first. Chilled seed comes up within days of sowing.

Water weekly through the first summer. Deer damage it readily, so cage young plants for two or three winters. It grows leggy and bare at the base with age, so set it at the back of a border. Prune in spring after it flowers, and cut out unwanted suckers to hold its size.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, and bees and butterflies come for the nectar. One red chokeberry bears alone, because most of its seed forms without fertilization and grows into a near copy of the mother shrub. Seedlings may bear at 2 years old, and the shrub sets a good crop almost every year. Leaf spot and twig or fruit blight can occur, and roundheaded apple borers sometimes attack.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

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