Aronia melanocarpa

The Aronia melanocarpa, or black chokeberry, is a very hardy North-American bush. Its beautiful spring flowering in the form of white and fragrant clusters is followed by black, shiny, and edible berries with a slight taste of blackcurrant. It is at the end of the season that this chokeberry is most appreciated due to its festive attire: crowned with orange and reddish-purple, it is adorned with generous black clusters hanging from red petioles, highly coveted by birds. The bush is both ornamental and easy to grow in ordinary soil, in a sunny location to enhance its colours.

Coming from Canada and the northeastern United States, Aronia macrocarpa is a distant cousin of roses, plum trees, and brambles, a member of the vast rose family. This beautiful bush with a fairly spreading habit reaches between 1.50 and 2 m (4 ft 11 in and 6 ft 7 in) in height and 2.50 to 3 m (8 ft 2 in to 9 ft 10 in) in width. It has fairly slow growth with a dense vegetation. Its bark is smooth, reddish-brown. It bears deciduous, alternating, simple, ovate, finely indented leaves about 6 cm (2.4 in) long, with a satin dark green colour that turns truly fiery in autumn, adopting various shades of orange, copper, crimson red to purple. In April-May, white flowers speckled with pale pink, 2 cm (0.8 in) in diameter, appear. Gathered in corymbs, they are very numerous, fragrant and nectar-rich. They give way to clusters of round, green-purple berries, which become black-purple and shiny while their peduncles turn red. These edible berries have a slightly tart taste but are rich in antioxidants and last quite a long time in winter if not consumed by birds.

Naturally very resistant to diseases and pests, Aronia melanocarpa is an excellent free hedgerow bush, both hardy, ornamental, and undemanding. While it tolerates the presence of limestone and adapts to poor soils, it will only reach its full potential in fresh, deep, slightly acidic soil. It finds its place in isolation, in a natural, rural hedge as well as in large shrub borders. To achieve a spectacular mass effect, plant it in groups of 3 to 6 specimens. This chokeberry can be combined in a hedge that is both beautiful and delicious with other fruit-bearing shrubs, or blossom such as apple trees, plum trees, ornamental cherry trees, deciduous viburnums, hedge honeysuckles, witch hazel, Japanese Goumi, anemone trees, mayberries, sea buckthorn (Hyppophae rhamnoides), goji, and blueberry bushes.

Aronia berries can be consumed fresh, cooked, in jam, or as juice that can be mixed, for example, with cranberry juice and apple juice.