Ribes velutinum (desert gooseberry)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Ribes velutinum, photographed by Tim Messick — fig. a Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-21 / obs. 202756001

Ribes velutinum, photographed by Henrik Kibak — fig. b Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200178784

Ribes velutinum, photographed by Alexander Wentworth — fig. c Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194342113

Ribes velutinum, photographed by Tom Wainwright — fig. d Tom Wainwright, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186915038

Ribes velutinum, photographed by Nolan Exe — fig. h Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 134400606

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Ribes velutinum, 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
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Idaho	IDA
Montana	MNT
Nevada	NEV
Oregon	ORE
Utah	UTA
Washington	WAS

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 50 in flower of 104 examined

73%

83%

48%

Proportion of examined Ribes velutinum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	1	1	too few examined
Mar	11	15	73%	48% to 89%
Apr	24	29	83%	65% to 92%
May	13	27	48%	31% to 66%
Jun	1	16	6%	1% to 28%
Jul	0	9	0%	0% to 30%
Aug	0	4	too few examined
Sep	0	1	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	1	too few examined
Dec	0	1	too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Ribes velutinum 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. 50 of 104 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 10 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 glandulifera (A.Heller) A.Berger
Grossularia velutina (Greene) Coville & Britton
Ribes glanduliferum A.Heller
Ribes gooddingii M.Peck
Ribes velutinum var. brachyanthum Jancz.
Ribes velutinum var. congdonii Jancz.
Ribes velutinum var. glanduliferum (A.Heller) Jeps.
Ribes velutinum var. gooddingii (M.Peck) C.L.Hitchc.
Ribes velutinum var. greeneianum Jancz.
Ribes velutinum var. velutinum

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.