Grossulariaceae (GRAW-su-lar-ee-AY-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Shrubs with clustered, palmate leaves
- Pendant flowers with petal-like sepals
- Fruit a berry
Description (Jepson)
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Plants are shrubs, usually deciduous
- Divided into 2 major groups
- Gooseberries have spines
- Currants lack spines
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets); usually palmately lobed (lobes radiating from a single point)
- Alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem) and generally clustered
- Flowers
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) a usually pendent raceme (unbranched stem with stalked flowers opening from the bottom up), at the leaf axil (branching point)
- Bisexual, radially symmetrical flowers
- Sepals (usually green, outer flower parts), petals, and stamens (male flower parts) fused at base into a cup-like structure (hypanthium)
- Ovary inferior (below the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit a translucent berry (a usually multi-seeded fruit with a fleshy ovary wall), some with spines, often used in cooking and baking
Notes
- Family of a single genus (Ribes)
- Consists of approximately 120 species of gooseberries and currants
- Found in the northern hemisphere and temperate South America
- Scientific name from the former genus Grossularia (now included in the genus Ribes), from the French groseille, “gooseberry”
- Represented by 4 species at Edgewood
Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family
