Ribes rubrum (Red Currant)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Zeke Marshall — fig. a Zeke Marshall, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-11 / obs. 196804006

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Henry "Nick" Robertson — fig. b Henry "Nick" Robertson, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 196775397

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam — fig. c Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194803893

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Pavel Kacl — fig. d Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193866939

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Jason Grant — fig. e Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193043249

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Michel Langeveld — fig. f Michel Langeveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190337599

Ribes rubrum, photographed by Jon Mortin — fig. h Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159234457

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 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Ribes rubrum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Belgium	BGM	EUROPE
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Great Britain	GRB
Netherlands	NET
Spain	SPA

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 160 in flower of 435 examined

78%

83%

81%

Proportion of examined Ribes rubrum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	2	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	7	9	78%	45% to 94%
Apr	55	66	83%	73% to 90%
May	95	118	81%	72% to 87%
Jun	2	71	3%	1% to 10%
Jul	0	119	0%	0% to 3%
Aug	0	34	0%	0% to 10%
Sep	0	9	0%	0% to 30%
Oct	0	3	too few examined
Nov	1	2	too few examined
Dec	0	2	too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Ribes rubrum 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. 160 of 435 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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.

Also published as 46 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.

Grossularia rubra Rupr.
Grossularia rubra (L.) Scop.
Ribes acerifolium K.Koch
Ribes acidum Ehrh.
Ribes albescens Poit. & Turpin
Ribes albicans Poit. & Turpin
Ribes albovirens Poit. & Turpin
Ribes auriculatum Poit. & Turpin
Ribes baicalense Turcz. ex Steud.
Ribes carneum Poit. & Turpin
Ribes domesticum Jancz.
Ribes fleischmannii Rchb. ex K.Koch
Ribes glabrum (Hedl.) Sennikov
Ribes hladnickianum Freyer ex Steud.
Ribes hortense Hedl.
Ribes houghtonianum Jancz.
Ribes macrocarpum Jancz.
Ribes officinarum Dum.Cours.
Ribes pendulum Salisb.
Ribes racemosum Poit. & Turpin
Ribes rubrum subsp. glabrum Hedl.
Ribes rubrum subsp. sativum (Rchb.) Syme
Ribes rubrum subsp. vulgare O.Schwarz
Ribes rubrum var. domesticum Wallr.

and 22 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.