WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

With dainty bundles of showy, yellow flowers, sweet berries, and leafy branches, this 3–6-foot tall shrub makes a popular landscape specimen. Note the absence of thorns or prickles on the branches, hairless, oval leaves with 3 lobes, trumpet-shaped flowers, and hairless fruit.

FLOWERS: March–June. Clusters with up to 15 bright-yellow, tubular flowers, 1/4–3/8-inch long (6–10 mm), with 5 spreading petal-like sepals and 5 smaller erect petals; stamens as long as the petals. Fruit a round, hairless berry to 3/8-inch diameter (10 mm), red, orange, or purplish-black; edible, juicy, sweet.

LEAVES: Alternate. Blade broadly oval to wedge-shaped, 3/4–2-inches wide (2–5 cm), deeply dissected with 3 lobes, toothed or not; surfaces pale green, hairless with age. Leaves turn red to maroon in the fall.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly moist soils, riparian woodlands, stream sides with willows, roadsides; desert scrublands, sagebrush, pinyon-juniper, ponderosa woodlands.

ELEVATION: 4,200–8,200 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CO, NM, UT, TX; widespread west of Mississippi River.

SIMILAR SPECIES: This species has 3 intergrading varieties and numerous cultivars in the nursery trade. Twelve species of Ribes in NM, 8 may have no stem spines or bristles, 5 of those with tubular, not cup-shaped flowers. Reliable ID relies on flowers and fruit. Only Golden Currant has yellow flowers. Wax Currant, R. cereum, in much the same range, has pinkish-white flowers, orange fruit with scattered hairs, and leaves with shallow lobes.

NM COUNTIES: Nearly statewide, except se counties, in low- to mid-elevation, moist habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibola, Colfax, Curry, De Baca, Dona Ana, Grant, Guadalupe, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, Mora, Otero, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Taos, Torrance, Union.