Juneberry Dreams

Juneberry in its prime.

It's time for tree-followers to pick a tree. For 2016, I want to follow a juneberry—a tree with a rich store of stories and yummy fruit. But first I have to find one.

June “berries” are pomes—from Latin for apples. They look like little apples and are in the same subtribe, but the flesh is juicy instead of mealy. Source.

You may know juneberry as serviceberry, sarviceberry, shadbush, shadblow or some variation thereof. The US government chose Saskatoon serviceberry as the official common name for our juneberries (USDA NRCS). I prefer juneberry or sarviceberry. The scientific name is Amelanchier alnifolia.

Sarviceberries grow here in southeast Wyoming, but no specific locations came to mind. So I turned to the internet. Many herbaria (plant specimen repositories) are digitizing their holdings and putting them online, creating digital (virtual) herbaria. These are wonderful resources! I was sure I'd find herbarium records for sarviceberry in our area.

Amelanchier specimen from the Laramie Plains. Rocky Mountain Herbarium Specimen Database.

Fortunately for Wyoming botanists, the Rocky Mountain Herbarium (RM) at the University of Wyoming is in the process of digitizing. This is a truly Herculean task. The RM is the tenth largest herbarium in the US, with about 800,000 specimens. Still, they’ve made enough progress that I found 56 locations for Amelanchier in Albany County:

Juneberry collection locations in Albany County, Wyoming. These are on public land; locations on private land do not display. Rocky Mountain Herbarium Specimen Database.

Some locations are rough approximations—that’s the usual case for older collections. Early botanists didn’t bother so much with collection data. And many of these places won’t be easily accessible until the snow melts. But I found a half dozen specimens from well-described locations near roads, including three with GPS coordinates noted by the collector. I should be able to find these, hopefully in the near future.

Juneberry in June. Black Hills, South Dakota.

The next challenge is identification. Juneberry is easy to recognize in flower or leaf, but I don’t want to wait until May or June. So I had better hone my winter id skills—become familiar with its bark, buds, leaf scars and so forth.

In the University of New Hampshire’s guide to Winter Shrub Identification (Amelanchier includes shrubs and small trees), winter buds are described as “pinkish, long, tapering; bud scales overlapping and twisted at the tip.” Virginia Tech’s fact sheet says they are “about 1/2 inch long with red, imbricate scales that are hairy along the margin.” [Bud scales are small tough modified leaves that protect the bud. Not all plants have them.]

Winter buds of Amelanchier alnifolia (Oregon State Dept. of Horticulture).

Bark descriptions include “smooth, gray or brown, often with longitudinal stripes” (source), and “thin, light brown and tinged with red; smooth or shallowly fissured” (source).

Trunk of Amelanchier alnifolia, about two inches across. Black Hills.

I'm optimistic that I will find at least one juneberry patch in the next few months. Stay tuned for progress reports. They will come monthly as part of the virtual gatherings of tree followers kindly hosted by The Squirrelbasket. The upcoming one began January 7, and lasts a week. See more information and reports here.

Tree-following is always interesting and sometimes an adventure—consider joining us!

Juneberry memories, from a greener time.