Ribes affine
Flowering Currant
Ribes sanguineum
Pursh Species
- Botanical name
- Ribes sanguineum
- Also known as
- Blood Currant, Flowering Currant, Red-Flowering Currant, Winter Currant
- Family
- Grossulariaceae
- Genus
- Ribes
- Flowering period
- March to April
- Height
- 150–250 cm
- Spread
- 150–250 cm
- Hardiness
- Fully hardy (RHS H6)
- Reference
- World Flora Online
How to grow Flowering Currant
Full sun to partial shade
Low once established
Most reasonable, well-drained garden soils
6–7.5
Planting
An easy, quick shrub that gives early colour with no particular demands. It grows fast enough to fill a gap in a new border within three or four years.
Pruning
Prune straight after flowering: cut the flowered stems back to a strong shoot and take about a fifth of the oldest wood out at the base. Left unpruned it becomes tall, bare-legged and shy of flowering.
Propagation
Hardwood cuttings pushed into a spare piece of ground in autumn root with very little attention. This is one of the easiest shrubs to increase.
Pests and diseases
Aphids curl the young leaves and coral spot enters dead wood. Neither is usually serious.
Value to wildlife
Flowers in March are worked by bumblebee queens and early solitary bees when forage is scarce, which is its main value.
Notes
The foliage has a strong pungent smell when brushed or cut, which some people dislike — worth knowing before planting it beside a path.
Some structured details on this page (such as tolerances, pH and hardiness) come from USDA PLANTS Database (public domain). The written guidance is GardenDecoded's own, researched as described in our editorial policy.
Other names for this plant
These names have all been used for Ribes sanguineum but are no longer the accepted name. You may still meet them on old labels, in books, or in nursery catalogues.
Calobotrya sanguinea
Coreosma sanguinea
Others in Ribes
GardenDecoded is an educational gardening reference. Botanical data comes from World Flora Online and GBIF; growing guidance is our own. Always check a plant's toxicity and local invasiveness status before planting, and never eat or apply a plant based on this site alone.