Western Snowberry

Symphoricarpos occidentalis

Hosts 2 caterpillarsSpecialist hostBird foodPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers June to July; fruits in September
Type	shrub
Sun	Full sun, partial shade
Water	Low
Soil	pH 5.5–8
Hardiness	zone 2–7
Mature height	1 m
Mature spread	1.5 m
Spacing	1 m
Years to maturity	3
Bloom	Jun–Jul
Flower colour	Pink White read from a published flora
In bloom	June July
Fruit	Sep
Native to	AB, SK

egg-shaped leaves about 5 cm long in opposite pairs; spreads by suckers into a colony

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

419 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. 57 herbarium specimens and 1,603 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

Fescue Grassland south AB: 1717 records, high confidence
Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 1343 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 1274 records, high confidence
Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 372 records, high confidence
Northern Continental Divide south AB: 120 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 80 records, high confidence
Cypress Upland south AB / SK: 68 records, high confidence
Eastern Continental Ranges central AB: 33 records, high confidence
Slave River Lowland north AB: 26 records, high confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 22 records, high confidence
Mid-Boreal Uplands central AB / SK: 21 records, high confidence
Western Alberta Upland central AB: 18 records, medium 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

41 documented relationships, 1 with a specialist that has no alternative.

nectar for

Aerial Yellowjacket Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
American Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Ammophila aberti Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Anania funebris Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Andrena prunorum Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Brown-belted Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Brown-tailed Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Central Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Cerceris nigrescens Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Common Wood-Nymph Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Confusing Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Coral Hairstreak Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Cryptic Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Grammoptera subargentata Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Great Golden Digger Wasp Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Great Spangled Fritillary Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Half-black Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Hunt's Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Hylaeus affinis Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Indiscriminate Cuckoo Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Lasioglossum incompletum Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Monarch Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Nevada Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Northern Amber Bumble Bee Clint Otto et al. 2020
Northern Azure Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Odynerus dilectus Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Orange-banded Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Painted Lady Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Police Car Moth Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Polistes aurifer Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Pterocheilus quinquefasciatus Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Red Admiral Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Red-belted Bumble Bee Clint Otto et al. 2020
Speyeria edwardsii Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Tricoloured Bumble Bee Clint Otto et al. 2020
Two-ranked Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Vancouver Bumble Bee Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Western Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org

caterpillar host for

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth Pohl et al. 2018
Snowberry Clearwing ★Pohl et al. 2018

cover for

Song Sparrow Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Also worth knowing

Safety

Low toxicity to pets; Low toxicity to people

Buying it

About $25–$50 per plant (estimate), usually stocked by garden centres. Estimate (shrub default); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate