Running Serviceberry

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, like our Nantucket serviceberry, about a foot a year. It makes a low shrub 1 to 4 feet tall, now and then 6, whose upright stems rise from underground runners into scattered colonies and dense thickets.

Its rounded, finely toothed leaves, about an inch and a half long, are woolly underneath at flowering. White flowers open in clusters of six to nine from April into June, as the leaves unfold. The fruits ripen in July and August, red and then purple-black, a third to half an inch across. Birds take them as they ripen, and the leaves color in fall.

It grows wild from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and North Dakota, south to Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and New Jersey, and in the mountains to the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. Its home is rocky summits and cliffs, open woods, clearings, shores, fields and roadsides, on acid soil. Records from Missouri, South Dakota and the District of Columbia lie outside that range.

How to grow Running Serviceberry

Running serviceberry grows in full sun or part shade. It takes dry to average soil and wants it acid, whether sandy, gravelly or peaty, and once rooted it stands drought well. Set plants 4 feet apart, and keep them 3 feet from a wall or a path, because the runners spread outward. At its size it can go 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 a thin mulch clear of the stems. Sow the cleaned seed outdoors in fall, a quarter inch deep, and keep the bed mulched. For spring, hold it damp in the refrigerator for 90 to 120 days first. Many seeds wait until the second spring to come up.

Water weekly through the first summer, then only in a long drought. Deer and other browsers eat serviceberry twigs, 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 lone plant may set seed without pollen from another, as many serviceberries do, but two or more seedlings from different parents make a surer crop. Birds strip the fruit as it ripens in July and August, so net a few stems if you want a handful.