Serviceberry

Today is a special fruit that I think you’ll love: the serviceberry.

Also called “shadbush”, “Juneberry” and “saskatoon berry” this understory tree has some of the earliest fruits in northern climates.

Despite being ready to harvest in June, I wanted to get ahead of the season a little bit since this is the perfect time of year to scope out trees since almost nothing has leaves yet!

Let’s get into it:

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name:  Various Amelanchier species

Preferred Habitat: I always find them on the edges of forests, but I have found them in urban landscaping and in gravel pits before as well. They don’t seem too picky about where they’ll grow wild!

Edible Parts: Flowers, fruit

Distribution: There are Amelanchier species in every US state except for Hawaii, and in all Canadian provinces and territories except Nunavut! In Michigan there are 6 species recorded.

Harvest Season: Late spring to early summer, most commonly in early to mid-June

Key Identifiers: Distinct oval leaves that are finely toothed around the edges, delicate clusters of white flowers early in the spring with delicate elongated petals, fruit that look like hazy dark purple crab apples or blueberries. The bottom of the fruits have a small calyx like apples do!

Toxic Look-Alikes: There are generally no toxic look alikes. Crabapples, wild plums, and hawthorn could be confused for the plant, but they all fruit at different times and are all safe to consume.

Nutrition:

• Very high in antioxidants

• High in vitamins C, K, potassium, and magnesium, calcium, and phosphorus

• Promotes good heart health

• Lowers bad cholesterol

• High in fiber

• Low glycemic index, also improves insulin sensitivity

• Improves eye health

• High in anthocyanins and flavonoids

• Anti-inflammatory properties

• Improves cognitive health

• Initial research suggests that serviceberry also fights cancerous cells

Uses

Serviceberries are wonderful when fresh but can be used any way you’d use most berries: desserts, baked goods, granolas, eaten dried, made into beverages like shrubs or cocktails, and on salads.

The flavor is sweet (despite being pretty low in sugar for a fruit) and has kind of a unique flavor. The best way to describe it is being a generally blueberry-esque flavor with hints of almond.

Growth Habits

The tree is slender and has silver bark with very distinct white flowers that are easy to spot in the spring around this time.

They tend to be shorter in my experience (10-20ft tall) and grow mainly on forest edges and near pathways, but I have definitely found them in larger mixed hardwood forests too!

They are often used as landscaping shrubs and are great ornamental trees as well which can be an easy way to find them.

As for growing your own, they can tolerate dappled light since they are understory trees, but like most fruit-bearing trees they have higher yields in full sun!

Prune them pretty much how you like, don’t worry about fertilizing or watering regularly under most circumstances since they’re mostly wild and are drought tolerant.

Overall, they make a great food forest or edible landscape addition!

Additional Information

One of the biggest (and likely the only) pests you’ll have to deal with is birds.

They will absolutely CLEAN off the tree of fruit when they’re ripe so if you’re growing one, consider pruning it to stay short so it’s easy to cover with netting or something.

Otherwise, if you’re foraging just make sure to keep an eye on the tree and pick fruit just before they fully ripen if you want to get any!

Even if you don’t feel like growing one for food, they’re very pretty trees and make a great low maintenance native fruit tree that’s beneficial to early pollinators and wildlife!

Cultivars

While there are a few cultivars, I honestly can’t find a ton of information about each of them. So I recommend reaching out to individual nurseries to ask about specific differences and traits:

• Allegheny - This is a species endemic to Main that has a purple-ish bronze leaf color

• Smokey Saskatoon - Formerly popular in Canada for commercial cultivation with larger, sweeter fruits

• Autumn Brilliance - Known for its fiery orange foliage in the fall, but still produces good fruit

• Regent - A North Dakotan variety known for its hardiness and sweet fruit

And then various others with little information can be found at these two nurseries:

Honeyberry USA (Despite the outdated website, they are a great company, I have actually bought from them before!)

Humble Abode

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