Ribes viscosissimum / sticky currant

Adjectives: edible, forest openings, fragrant, native, shrub, understory

Also known as: Hall’s sticky currant, mountain currant

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Viscosissimum – what a cool name! Before reading any further, just say it aloud.

OK. Sticky currant is a shrub that grows in moist mountain forests, especially along stream banks, but also can be found with sagebrush. Like other currants and gooseberries, it can grow to nearly 7 feet tall. But unlike the others, it has a stem covered with sticky, glandular hairs. These are fragrant. The stems do not have spines or bristles (i.e. it is a currant, not a gooseberry).

Sticky currant has thick, rough leaves divided into three (or five), approximately equal-sized lobes. The lobes are rounded with toothed tips. Typically, these are up to about 3 inches across (and long). The petioles are also long. The leaves are also fragrant.

The inflorescences are clusters of several flowers, often drooping. Each flower has five sepals… whitish, or green or pink-tinged, and sometimes reflexed (bent backward). These give the flowers a bell-shaped or tubular look. The stamens and stigma are surrounded by small whitish petals. What you really see is the sepals. The flowers are bee pollinated. Flowering is in spring and early summer.

Fruits are blue-black berries up to a ½ in diameter. They are covered with a bluish wax and are very gummy.