Amelanchier alnifolia GreatBerry Aroma - Saskatoon

Amelanchier alnifolia GreatBerry® Aroma 'Kojuaaga' is a beautiful fruit bush originating from North America, long appreciated for its edible, tasty, and highly nutritious fruits. This relatively modest-sized variety has an erect and wide bushy habit with multiple trunks. Following its white spring flowering, it produces clusters of dark, juicy, and sweet fruits with a flavour reminiscent of blueberries, apples, almonds, and hazelnuts. They can be harvested from June to August and enjoyed fresh, dried, in jelly, jam, or in desserts and pastries. Amelanchiers are easy-going and rewarding bushes or small trees. They make excellent informal, hedgerow, or countryside hedges.

Originating from North America, from Alaska to Maine, Amelanchier alnifolia is a robust bush from the large Rosaceae family, spared by most parasites and resistant to extreme cold. In the wild, it can be found along watercourses as well as in less favourable environments, such as windy rocky slopes. It thrives in acidic, moist soil, adapting well to relatively dry and hot summers once established. To achieve a good harvest, it needs sufficiently fertile soil and watering when needed.

Its habit is bushy and branched, taller than wide. With a rather slow growth rate, the bush will reach approximately 2 to 3 m in height and 2 m in spread at maturity. Its bark is grey to brown, sometimes tinged with red. Smooth when young, becoming rougher over time. The abundant flowering occurs in April-May at the tips of bare young branches or those already adorned with very young leaves, depending on the climate. Flowering and fruiting are rapid in this amelanchier, typically around 3-4 years of age. The 2cm diameter white flowers, with 5 petals and yellow stamens, are clustered along the branches. They are followed by edible, round fruits resembling blueberries, known as pomes. They turn almost black when ripe, in June. Their pleasantly sweet and aromatic flavour and juicy pulp make them suitable for consumption fresh or cooked, in jam or jelly. Recent analyses confirm their high content of antioxidant molecules, vitamins, and minerals. Saskatoon berries have a limited shelf life. They can be eaten fresh, frozen, dried, or preserved for later use. A single plant can yield a harvest ranging from 3 kg up to 7-8 kg of fruit depending on soil richness, but planting two plants is often recommended to optimise fruit formation.

The young spring leaves are fuzzy, becoming tougher over time. They display a lovely bluish-green hue before turning yellow in autumn before falling. Measuring up to 5 cm in length, they are entire, oval-shaped, serrated at the edges, and arranged alternately on the branches.

Amelanchier GreatBerry® Aroma is a robust, undemanding fruit bush as charming as it is resilient, deserving a place in a countryside, informal, or fruit hedge. It can also be used as a backdrop for perennial or lower shrub borders. It pairs beautifully with ornamental apple and cherry trees, deciduous euonymus, Japanese quince, spring spireas, hawthorns, medlar, prunus, and many others. Create a fruit hedge by combining it, for example, with the mayberry (Lonicera kamtschatica 'Sweet Myberry'), garden blackberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon), blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes, Aronia, Japanese silverberry...

The name 'Saskatoon', an anglicisation of a word from the Cree language, can be translated as 'the fruit of the tree with many branches'. This fruit gave its name to the Canadian city of Saskatoon.