Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Amelanchier arborea (Michx. f.) Fern.
- Family: Rose (Rosaceae)
- Flowering: March-May
- Field Marks: This species is distinguished by its slightly heart-shaped leaf bases and the white flowers with 5 narrow petals.
- Habitat: Rich wooded slopes and bluffs, steep ravines, moist hammocks.
- Habit: Tree up to 20 feet tall, with a trunk diameter up to 8 inches; crown rounded and spreading. It is usually found as an understory tree.
- Bark: Smooth and gray or silvery, becoming darker and scaly when old.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, oval to broadly lanceolate, pointed at the tip, often slightly heart-shaped at the base, finely toothed along the edges, pale and often hairy on the lower surface, up to 4 inches long, up to 2 inches wide.
- Flowers: Several in drooping clusters, sometimes blooming before the leaves appear.
- Sepals: 5, united, the lobes reflexed, smooth.
- Petals: 5, white, free from each other, narrowly oblong, 1/2-3/4 inch long.
- Stamens: Numerous, attached to the sepals.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior; styles 2-5, united.
- Fruits: Berry-like, spherical, red to purple, sweet.
- Notes: The fruit of the downy service-berry is edible. Other common names are shadbush and juneberry.
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