By Jean Ponzi
Our native Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.) is a hardy, versatile small tree that adds ecological value to landscapes. Fragrant white early-spring blossoms attract and nourish pollinators. June-ripe berries feed our birds and will pack antioxidants into homemade jellies and baked goods. Vibrant fall foliage, drought-tolerance and soil-type adaptability make this compact woody a low-maintenance, year-round beauty-bearer.
Serviceberry will delightfully boost biodiversity in any yard, streetscape, park, and school or corporate campus. Plant one as the focal point of your native plant flower garden, or cluster two or more below your oaks or other shade trees for understory habitat and interest. Aligned with native dogwoods, plums and hawthorns they can grow a petite allée. A shrubby Serviceberry clump will fast replace a “privacy hedge” of invasive bush honeysuckle – gloriously!
Rose family member Amelanchier goes by many names: Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum, Sarvis. Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural and ecological importance. Revered for fruits and medicinal uses, this is what’s known as a calendar plant, faithful to seasonal weather patterns. Blooms are a sign that the ground has thawed, and shad are running upstream, where streams are clear enough for shad spawning.
It’s a preferred browse for deer and moose, host to butterfly larvae including Tiger Swallowtails, Viceroys, Hairstreaks and Admirals, and a vital source of breeding season calories for birds.
We can choose from several nativevarieties and be confident they’ll maintain the ecological connections that are often lost in cultivars, because some of these are native-species crosses. Saskatoon has the most flavorful fruit. Other varieties maximize drought and cold hardiness.
Sourcing your Serviceberries from a native-savvy local grower will get you the kinds best suited for your planting site. In our area, these include Rolling Ridge, Forrest Keeling, Greenscape Gardens, Sugar Creek, Hartke, Garden Heights and Forest ReLEAF. Check out the Resource Guide at www.grownative.org for expert native landscapers, plant providers, full-color planting plans, webinars and much more.
As native plant popularity booms, plant breeders are busy cultivating all kinds of “nativar” variations because the gardening public craves what is new, but research has shown that changes motivated by aesthetic desires – like modifying foliage shape and color, or bloom size and timing – will break up the relations native plants and insects have evolved.
Resist the temptation to settle for “new” or “prettier” when you can grow ecological strengths with our beautiful, durable straight-native species. Meet these talented native plants in the Whitmire Wildflower Garden at Shaw Nature Reserve, the Missouri Botanical Garden’s rural site, a short trip down I-44 in Grey Summit.
Serviceberry is an ideal replacement when you take down those breakage-prone ornamental pears (Bradford, Whitespire, Chanticleer, etc.) to prevent the spread of Callery Pear, their invasive parent type. Serviceberry is so similar to the problematic pears in size, shape, spring flower and fall foliage interest, it’s astounding how long it took for this native tree to gain a root-hold among our top street-tree choices.
Yes, the sterile pear types were bred to keep “fruit mess” off our sidewalks, but I have yet to see squashed blobs on the walkways under my home’s Serviceberries, given their swoop-in tasty appeal to birds of all kinds, and us – if we show up to pick on the brief, happy days when these wild fruits ripen.
Grown as shrubs, Serviceberries have a suckering habit. This supports their capacity to form a living landscape screen. If you need to limit this spread you can simply clip off any suckering shoots at ground level, once or twice a year.
Living with Serviceberry links our landscapes to this continent’s Indigenous heritage and values of stewardship, reciprocity and gratitude. The choice to share our places with this lovely woody neighbor can literally ground the truth at the heart of The Serviceberry, a brilliant new book by Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. The tree is her central character, a leafy generosity teacher.
We can learn to live in the Serviceberry way: All Flourishing Is Mutual.
Jean Ponzi is a longtime, strong local voice for Earth, through her work from the EarthWays Center of Missouri Botanical Garden, sharing years of conversations on her KDHX Earthworms show, writing this Healthy Planet column, and thanks to being friends with trees.