Wild Gooseberry

Ribes oxyacanthoides

Bird foodPollinator plant

No openly-licensed photograph of this species is in the catalogue yet. We show a photo only when we can credit the photographer.

Growing it

When	Flowers May to June; fruits July to August
Type	shrub
Sun	Full sun, partial shade
Water	Low, medium
Soil	pH 5.5–7
Hardiness	zone 2–6
Mature height	1 m
Mature spread	1.5 m
Spacing	1 m
Years to maturity	4
Bloom	May–Jun
Flower colour	Purple White read from a published flora
In bloom	May June
Fruit	Jul–Aug
Native to	AB, SK

lobed leaves about 4 cm long; arching canes

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

235 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. 90 herbarium specimens and 556 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: 317 records, high confidence
Fescue Grassland south AB: 178 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 131 records, high confidence
Eastern Continental Ranges central AB: 68 records, high confidence
Cypress Upland south AB / SK: 66 records, high confidence
Northern Continental Divide south AB: 64 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 50 records, high confidence
Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 43 records, high confidence
Western Alberta Upland central AB: 34 records, high confidence
Mid-Boreal Uplands central AB / SK: 22 records, high confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 13 records, medium confidence
Slave River Lowland north AB: 13 records, medium confidence
Wabasca Lowland north AB: 9 records, medium confidence
Tazin Lake Upland north AB / SK: 6 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

5 documented relationships.

nectar for

Andrena milwaukeensis Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Central Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Half-black Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Tricoloured Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Vancouver Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

Also worth knowing

Safety

Has thorns or prickles; Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Edible parts

Fruit

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