North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

Well,  This has proved a very interesting subject.  I knew that Hidden Springs had Aronia in their catalog, but I don't remember having seen the bushes there and never thought about them.  I had the vague notion that they were one of those obscure European fruits.  How surprised I was when I did a little searching and discovered that they are a native fruit. 

    I looked in several books at home.  The Peterson field guide lists 3 species and says they grow in wet or dry soils.  Both landscaping books said they are very easy to grow in any soil.  There is a book called FRUITS which is Thoreau's writings on various fruits in his area, amazingly thorough and a good sourcebook for looking up about any native fruit or nut.  He describes the chokeberry bushes as growing over and around the wild blueberry thickets, (and an aerial survey today shows this association between the two remains).  He says the fruits look like large dark blueberries, and may be picked by mistake by children.  The fruits hang a long time because nothing seems to feed on them. 

    I get the impression that the red and purple berried species are more northern and grow taller (to 10 or 12 feet) while the black berried ones are shorter (to about 4 ft)and more southern, also that the latter will take drier soils.  The fact that the cultivated varieties grow pretty tall makes me think that they are crosses.  I read that the wild plants are diploids but the cultivated ones are tetraploids. 

    When I called Hidden Springs and talked to Diana, she said their bushes were 7 ft tall and did pretty well in spite of no care whatsoever.  She said they had carried Aronia for years and told people how easy they were to grow.  She said that Aronia went to Europe and were improved there, then cultivars made their way back. They carry Viking and Nero, and said the two seem very similar.  The literature I found says the same, and that seedlings were very similar to their parents.  Here is a peice of literature I found on Aronia: 

 

Aronia melanocarpa is native to the eastern US, however, this crop was popularized and is commonly planted in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Prior to World War II, aronia was primarily used as an ornamental. Seeds were later imported from Germany to the former Soviet Union where cultivars were developed for fruit production (Kask 1987). By 1971, 5400 ha were planted in the former Soviet Union, 4000 of which were in Siberia. The original species is diploid, however, most of the cultivars are tetraploid. The 4x cultivars are sometimes designated as Aronia mitshurinii Skvorsov et Majjtulina, Rosaceae. The fruit was designated as a "healing plant" in the former Soviet Union. Experimental plantings of cultivars have been established in Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia, and Germany. The fruit is valued for its juice which is very high in anthocyanins, blends well with other fruit juices and is reputed as a source of "phenols, leucoanthocyanins, catachines, flavonoles, and flavones" that are considered to be bioactive in humans. The plants have no special cultural or site requirements. In the Pacific Northwest, the extremely vigorous plants will bear a small crop one year after rooted cuttings are planted. The plants resemble Amelanchier, Rosaceae in many respects. Yields of up to 17 kg/bush with 10 kg/bush average are reported in Eastern Europe. The fruit is often hand harvested by cutting the fruit clusters, but they can be mechanically harvested. In Oregon, an unidentified spring rust on the fruit caused some yield loss but its effect appeared to be minimal. Currently, there is interest in establishing commercial production of Aronia in the US. (Much of this information is from an unpublished document of an unknown source but is available upon request.)

A. melanocarpa is described in all my books as growing to no more than 4 ft high.  Looks to me from this that rather than a lot of hybridizing, which would NOT produce uniform offspring, that someone merely selected plants that had larger fruit, thus selecting tetraploids.  (I've read that it's easy to select tetraploids in apples and in citrus, just select seedlings for large leaves) And as is common in the Rosa family, tetraploid selections then produce tetraploid seedlings and you have something that is different from and better in some ways than the old diploids, without all that wild variation that would show up in the F2 and F3 generations.   

From PFAF: 

'Nero' has fruits twice the size of the species... The fruit is borne in clusters of about 15, it is more flavourful and the yield is about twice that of wild forms

From:

http://www.tulsagardencenter.com/htdocs/barry/aronia/aronia.htm  (Tulsa, now there's a wretched climate, makes me glad to be in Tennessee!)

I grow both red and black chokeberries in my garden and it’s a toss-up as to which I like best.  Both are highly drought tolerant, fruitful and beautiful year round. In the spring they cover themselves with two inch clusters of tiny sweet scented flowers. Flowers are followed by lots of shiny green berries that mature over the summer, eventually turning bright red or black depending on the species.  By late fall deep green foliage changes to flaming red. ‘Brilliantissima’, Brilliant Red Chokeberry, is an improved red fruiting cultivar.  Its one of the few deciduous shrubs that can equal burning bush when it comes to great fall color. ‘Autumn Magic’, a new and improved black chokeberry cultivar, is destined for greatness among mid-size deciduous shrubs.  Its fruit set of small glossy black berries is excellent and its fall foliage also is outstanding. ‘Nero’ and ‘Viking’ were developed in Europe and they are renowned for setting huge crops of very large, edible black berries.  Look for ‘Brilliantissima’ and ‘Autumn Magic’ in nurseries this fall or next spring.

and re the purple Aronia prunifolia, there are some very nice photos on Google images. 

    My local nursery carries Brilliantisima, a selection of the redberries species, so I'll get a couple of those, and then the Nero and Viking from Hidden Springs.  On the southwest slope alongside our driveway we don't want to plant peaches or plums, which will bloom too early there, or pears or apples, which will drop fruit in yellow jacket season and turn that stretch from a pleasant stroll into a gauntlet to be run.  Its too hot and dry for blueberries, and though we don't run barefoot ourselves, chestnut burs there would be unpleasant for our dogs.  I think Aronia should be ideal.     Donna