DESCRIPTION: This group consists of beautiful, flowering shrubs and trees mostly native of North America. They are commonly known as Serviceberries, Juneberries, Shadbush, Shad-blow and Snowy Mespilus. Serviceberries are some of the earliest spring-blooming trees. These trees have slender branches and smooth, pale gray bark. They begin to bloom in their first year producing a profusion of short spikes of pure-white, 1-inch flowers. The flowers are followed, in early summer, by small, sweet, red or purple berries. The berries are hidden among the dark green leaves and birds tend to devour them before gardeners realize they are ripening. They were a source of food in the pioneer days and are sometimes used in making jellies. A. canadensis (Downy Serviceberry) grows up 20 or 30 feet high and has an oval shape. It is covered in smooth, green leaves that are clothed with soft gray hairs when they first unfurl, thus the common name.
VARIETIES: A. canadensis (20-30 ft); A. oblongifolia (5-6 ft); A. laevis (30-40 ft); A. asiatica (30-40 ft); A. ovalis (6-9 ft); A. alnifolia (20 ft); A. grandiflor
Amelanchier (pronounced /æməˈlænʃɪər/ am-ə-lan-sheer), also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, service- or sarvisberry, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum or wild-plum, and chuckley pear is a genus of about 20 species of shrubs and small deciduous trees in the Rosaceae (Rose family).
The genus is native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, growing primarily in early successional habitats. It is most diverse taxonomically in North America, especially in the northern United States and in Canada, and is native to every US state except Hawaii. Two species also occur in Asia, and one in Europe. The systematics (taxonomy) of shadbushes has long perplexed botanists, horticulturalists, and others, as suggested by the range in number of species recognized in the genus from 6 to 33 in two recent publications. A major source of complexity comes from the occurrence of apomixis (asexual seed production), polyploidy, and hybridization.
These plants are valued horticulturally, and their fruits are important to wildlife. Amelanchier species grow to 0.2–20 m tall, arborecent or suckering and forming loose colonies or dense clumps to single-stemmed. The bark is gray or less often brown, smooth or fissuring in older trees. The leaves are deciduous, cauline, alternate, simple, lanceolate to elliptic to orbiculate, 0.5–10 x 0.5–5.5 cm, thin to coriaceous, with surfaces abaxially glabrous or densely tomentose at flowering, abaxially glabrous or more or less hairy at maturity. The inflorescences are terminal, with 1–20 flowers, erect or drooping, either in clusters of one to four flowers, or in racemes with 4–20 flowers. The flowers have five white (rarely somewhat pink, yellow, or streaked with red), linear to orbiculate petals, 2.6–25 mm long, occasionally andropetalous (bearing apical microsporangia adaxially; only known in this genus in A. nantucketensis). The flowers appear in early spring, "when the shad run" according to tradition (leading to names such as "shadbush"). The fruit is a berry-like pome, red to purple to nearly black at maturity, 5–15 mm diameter, insipid to delectably sweet, maturing in summer.
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