Hello. Its my first post here! I belong to several forums and today I have registered here to get some help with some bushes growing in my backyard. I moved back to my hometown area in upstate NY last fall. In my backyard there is ALOT of bushes, plants and trees that had not been tended to in years. I am working on getting things cleaned up and organized. I am a bit of a green thumb with small gardens and grape growing. Anyway, there are some bushes in my backyard that I cant seem to ID. They have round berries and leafs that resemble a maple. Gooseberry maybe? Idk, but I am also a wine maker and I want to know if these berries are edible and maybe make wine or jam from them if possible. I am posting a few pics to help with identification. Thanks in advance for any help. ;-)
Definitely Ribes. Is it all the same plant? To me #1 looks like currant, # 2 and #3 look like either black currant or jostaberry or thornless gooseberry. They are all good for eating fresh, you can also make juice, jam, jelly or wine from them.
Thanks for your response. The pics are from a couple different plants that are all in very close proximity. Within a 5 foot radius I would guess. I assumed they were all the same. What sets them apart from each other? I will take a closer look at them shortly and try to see any difference between them. I guess I will also do some searching to find out how to tell when ripe, and find some recipes. Thanks again.
Do you remember how the flowers looked like? Here are pics of the flowers of jostaberry and black and white currants for you to compare. The flowers of red currant look similar to white. The fruits are small, round, about 1 cm in diameter for currants, a little bigger for jostaberry. Gooseberry fruits are still bigger and cylindrical, when ripe they can be green, yellow, red or very dark red, depending on the variety. The pictures are not to scale! The last picture is of ripe white currant fruits.
