Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) — identification, habitat & look-alikes

Black chokeberry is a native shrub of eastern North America whose glossy black berries are so astringent they make your mouth pucker, which is where the "choke" in the name comes from. It's a tough, cold-hardy landscape plant with white spring flowers and red fall color, and its fruit is sold as "aronia berries" for juice and jam.

Appearance

Growth form: A deciduous shrub usually 3–6 ft (1–2 m) tall, sometimes taller. It sends up new stems from the roots and can form spreading clumps.
Leaves: Alternate, finely toothed, glossy dark green, and hairless, 1–3 in (2.5–7.5 cm) long, with tiny raised glands along the top of the midrib. They turn red to wine-red in fall.
Flowers: Small white to pinkish five-petaled flowers, about 1/3 in (8 mm) across, in clusters 2–2½ in (5–6 cm) wide.
Flowering time: Blooms in late spring, May to June in North Carolina.
Fruit: Pea-sized purplish-black , about 1/4–3/8 in (6–9 mm) across, that ripen in August–September. The juice and seeds are deep purple. The fruit drops soon after ripening rather than hanging on into winter.

Look-alikes

Red chokeberryAronia arbutifolia

Red chokeberry grows taller (typically 6–13 ft / 2–4 m), its leaves are densely hairy underneath, and its red fruit hangs on into winter. Black chokeberry's leaves are smooth underneath and its black fruit drops before winter.

Why they get mixed upSame genus, same white spring flowers and red fall leaves.

Purple chokeberryAronia × prunifolia

Its fruit is dark purple to black and its leaves are moderately hairy underneath, so photos often can't separate the two.

Why they get mixed upIt's thought to be a natural hybrid of red and black chokeberry.

Cultivated aroniaAronia mitschurinii

Fruiting cultivars like 'Viking' and 'Nero' have thicker stems, sucker less, and have wider leaves and larger fruit. A single photo usually can't tell them apart.

Why they get mixed upThese cultivars were long sold under the black chokeberry name.

Where it lives

Typical habitats: Moist woods
Thickets and clearings
Bluffs and cliffs
Range: Native from Newfoundland west to Ontario and Minnesota and south to Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia. It is most at home in the Great Lakes region and the Northeast, reaching farther south in the higher Appalachians.
Preferred conditions: Hardy in USDA zones 3–8. Grows in sun or part shade on wet to fairly dry soils, but fruits best in full sun on moist, well-drained ground.
Flowering: Flowers May–Jun
Flowers May–Jun · Fruit Aug–Sep

Growing it

Propagation: Mainly by seed, which needs about three months of cold, moist storage before sprouting. Summer cuttings root easily.

Name and classification

About the name: Don't mix it up with chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), a wild cherry that is only distantly related despite the similar name. The popular fruiting cultivars 'Viking' and 'Nero' were long sold as black chokeberry, but DNA work shows they belong to Aronia mitschurinii, a hybrid bred in Russia from black chokeberry and European mountain ash. Black chokeberry has also been placed in Photinia (as Photinia melanocarpa), but recent studies show the two groups aren't close relatives.

Conservation

IUCN Red List: NENot EvaluatedNot yet assessed

Culture and stories

Culture and stories: Most of the world's "aronia berry" crop is grown in Poland, mainly from the hybrid cultivars rather than wild-type black chokeberry.
The juice's strong, stable color makes it useful as a natural food coloring.