Ribes hirtellum
species of plant
Ribes hirtellum is a species of gooseberry commonly known as wild gooseberry or swamp gooseberry. It is native to Canada and the northern United States. Cultivated gooseberries are derived from this species and from Ribes uva-crispa.
Ribes hirtellum is known by several other names, including American gooseberry, hairy-stem gooseberry, hairy gooseberry, low wild gooseberry northern gooseberry, smooth gooseberry, and wedge-leaf gooseberry.
Distribution and habitat
Ribes hirtellum grows in a variety of habitats, including wetlands such as fens, sedge meadows, riverbottom forests, and swamps, shorelines of streams and lakes, and rocky openings in forests and along cliffs. It grows throughout much of eastern north America, from Alberta to Nova Scotia in Canada, south to West Virginia, and west to Nebraska in the United States.
Use in gooseberry breeding
Whereas Ribes uva-crispa crops have been devastated by American gooseberry mildew, Podosphaera mors-uvae, which was accidentally introduced to Europe, Ribes hirtellum is resistant. It is one of four American species that have been interbred with R. uva-crispa to produce resistant cultivars similar to the original R. uva-crispa cultivars. The cultivar 'Houghton' is one of those obtained by crossing R. uva-crispa with R. hirtellum.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15441429. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ribes hirtellum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.