Red Baneberry

Actaea rubra

Bird foodPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers May to June; fruits July to September
Type	wildflower
Sun	Partial shade, full shade
Water	Medium, high
Soil	pH 5.5–7
Hardiness	zone 2–7
Mature height	0.9 m
Mature spread	0.9 m
Spacing	0.6 m
Years to maturity	3
Bloom	May–Jun
Flower colour	White read from a published flora
In bloom	May June
Fruit	Jul–Sep
Native to	AB, SK

feather-compound leaves about 25 cm long

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

417 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 139 herbarium specimens and 1,496 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 1218 records, high confidence
Northern Continental Divide south AB: 402 records, high confidence
Western Alberta Upland central AB: 326 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 281 records, high confidence
Mid-Boreal Uplands central AB / SK: 202 records, high confidence
Cypress Upland south AB / SK: 197 records, high confidence
Eastern Continental Ranges central AB: 195 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 99 records, high confidence
Fescue Grassland south AB: 66 records, high confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 48 records, high confidence
Wabasca Lowland north AB: 44 records, high confidence
Slave River Lowland north AB: 10 records, medium confidence
Western Boreal central AB: 8 records, medium confidence
Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 5 records, low confidence
Churchill River Upland north SK: 4 records, low confidence
Clear Hills Upland north AB: 3 records, low confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

10 documented relationships.

pollen for

A Flower Fly Robertson 1929
Agapostemon texanus Robertson 1929
Andrena erythrogaster Robertson 1929
Anthophora walshii Robertson 1929
Prionyx atratus Robertson 1929
Syrphus torvus Robertson 1929

nectar for

Evodinus monticola Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Hammerschmidtia rufa Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Orange-legged Furrow Bee LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia bucephala Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

Also worth knowing

Safety

High toxicity to pets; High toxicity to people

Buying it

About $8–$16 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (herb default); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate