Purple Chokeberry 'Viking'

I have this plant for fourteen years now and it is a very small tree in part shade. The white flowers are charming, similar to ninebark. ...Read MoreIn spite of what I read, the berries are snapped up before fall. I've never had any going into winter. Individual leaves start turning a bright orange and drop after the berries are done so the plant is one of the first to lose its leaves. Because of the casual way my plant turns color and drops its leaves, I never had a big fall show.

I bought one of this 'Viking' cultivar from a native plant nursery in southeast Pennsylvania and planted it near a foundation of a big, o...Read Moreld house. However, I really think "Viking' is the Black Chokeberry of A. melanocarpa. Its leaves are wider and more rounded than the Purple species and the fruit is a little bigger. Viking is the foremost cultivar that bears its fruit for commercial production of juices, jams, and jellies. Some chokeberry juice is often found in other fruit juices sold at grocery stores. The fruit is full of antioxidants.There is a farm that grows the Viking Chokeberry for its fruit as a health food, mostly in juice form, and the farm sells the plant in different sizes. This is Bellbrook Farm at 419 Union Rd in Brooklyn, Wisconsin, 53521, not far south of Madison.

I found two plantings of the straight species of Purple Chokeberry at Morton Arboretum in ne ILL shown in these PlantFiles of this plant. It is hard to find this plant species and any photos that I can find are copy righted.

It grows well on sandy soils in zone 7b in Germany and is drought resistant.