Amelanchier arborea(F.Michx.) Fernald

Downy Serviceberrycommon serviceberrydowny serviceberry

WFO wfo-0001009221 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Amelanchier arborea, photographed by rboles
fig. a rboles, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200943602

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 40 botanical countries

Regions where Amelanchier arborea is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Québec, Rhode I., South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriNebraskaNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaNova ScotiaOhioOklahomaOntarioPennsylvaniaQuébecSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVermontVirginiaWest VirginiaWisconsin DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Amelanchier arborea, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
Nebraska NEB
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Nova Scotia NSC
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Québec QUE
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 1,731 in flower of 2,373 examined

Proportion of examined Amelanchier arborea in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 8 13% 2% to 47%
Feb 21 29 72% 54% to 85%
Mar 579 592 98% 96% to 99%
Apr 670 753 89% 87% to 91%
May 433 570 76% 72% to 79%
Jun 21 300 7% 5% to 10%
Jul 0 62 0% 0% to 6%
Aug 0 15 0% 0% to 20%
Sep 2 15 13% 4% to 38%
Oct 3 21 14% 5% to 35%
Nov 1 3 too few examined
Dec 0 5 0% 0% to 43%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Amelanchier arborea observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 1,731 of 2,373 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,969 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.2 °C -3.8 °C 1.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.3 °C 28.4 °C 32.6 °C
Annual rainfall 862 mm 1,178 mm 1,534 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 122 mm 240 mm 321 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,969 research-grade observations of Amelanchier arborea that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Amelanchier alabamensis Britton
  • Amelanchier arborea f. nuda (E.J.Palmer & Steyerm.) Rehder
  • Amelanchier arborea var. alabamensis (Britton) G.N.Jones
  • Amelanchier arborea var. arborea
  • Amelanchier arborea var. austromontana (Ashe) H.E.Ahles
  • Amelanchier austromontana Ashe
  • Amelanchier botryapium Spach
  • Amelanchier canadensis Darl.
  • Amelanchier canadensis f. nuda E.J.Palmer & Steyerm.
  • Amelanchier canadensis subvar. tomentula (Sarg.) Asch. & Graebn.
  • Amelanchier canadensis var. tomentula Sarg.
  • Amelanchier intermedia Blanch.
  • Amelanchier ovalis var. subcordata DC.
  • Amelanchier wangenheimiana (Tausch) M.Roem.
  • Amelancus canadensis Medik. ex Vollm.
  • Aronia arborea Barton
  • Aronia botryapium Elliott
  • Aronia cordata Raf.
  • Aronia nivea J.C.Neumann ex Tausch.
  • Aronia subcordata Raf. ex DC.
  • Malus microcarpa Raf.
  • Mespilus arborea F.Michx.
  • Mespilus canadensis Walter
  • Mespilus canadensis var. cordata Michx.

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.