Clove currant is as beautiful as it is fragrant

JUST RECENTLY, ROWS of small, bright yellow tubes dangling from the branches of my flowering currant flared open at their ends like trumpets. Instead of a trumpet’s blare, a heavenly, clove-like aroma wafts across the garden from the open flowers.

Flowering currant is not to be confused with the more commonly planted alpine currant, a dense, twiggy shrub with inconpsicuous flowers and no fruit; or red currant, of jelly fame. Flowering currant produces black berries. Once again, confusion can arise. The black currants that dangle from the stems of flowering currant are not to be confused with dried black currants you find in boxes on grocery shelves. Those boxes of dried “currants” actually are dried ‘Black Corinth’ grapes.

Flowering currant is also not to be confused with European blackcurrant, which also yields black currants, but these with a totally different flavor from that of clove currant. European black currants are sometimes available in the U.S. and are very

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popular in northern Europe. Fowering currant goes under the appropriate botanical name of Ribes odoratum, as well as other common names such as clove currant, Missouri currant, buffalo currant, golden currant, and pruterberry. The bush grows about five feet tall and wide.

As an ornamental, the plant is best suited to the informal garden because of its loose growth habit. The willowy branches first shoot upwards, then arch towards the ground under their own weight. Vigorous suckers poke up through the soil a foot or more from the crown. The leaves are a glaucous green through the summer, then turn a rich coppery bronze in fall.

As a native to our Great Plains, the flowering currant would be expected to, and does, tolerate extremes of heat, cold, and drought. In my garden the plants receive better treatment than in the wild. The soil around each plant is blanketed under a deep mulch of leaves, and each year I prune the plants by cutting off

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