| General Description | A small deciduous shrub sometimes a small tree planted for its showy white blossoms that bloom through out early to mid spring. The plant gets its botanical name downy serviceberry from the tiny fine woolly hairs on the leaves as they first emerge in the spring. The early emerge leaves are the only way of telling this species apart from A. laevis and A. canadensis. |
| Shape | The crown is slightly round, upright or irregular, with a multi stem trunk. Either a big shrub or small tree. |
| Landscape | Makes a great garden shrub. Used mostly in city plantings, great to mass plant in bundles, and good for border plantings. Good for birds and bees as well. |
| Propagation | You can start my taking a some cuttings that are one quarter and three eighths of a inch in diameter. The best cutting come from the midsection of the growing shoots. Remove to foliage, but keep the two very top leaves. As a rooting medium, fill one gallon plastic pots with perlite or vermiculite and thoroughly moisten. Place the bottle's top half on top of the clippings. Once you’ve put the cutting into the dirt place the pot with the cuttings in a warm area where it will only receive filtered or indirect sunlight. Finally To prevent the cuttings from drying out, open the cap two or three times every week and sprinkle them with a tiny mist. Propagation should be done when the plant is dormant in autumn or very early spring. |
| Cultivation | Prefers dry or moist well-drained or dry low ph acidic soils, opposite of what A. laevis likes. Grows in a good variety of light conditions including deep shade, partial shade and full sun, loam or sand. |
| Pests | Leaf miners, spider mites, scales, rust spot and fire blight are some problems. The invasive japanese beetles are another. |
| Notable Specimens | Huge specimen off of falconbridge dr in small woods near Komoka Ontario, Canada. (Not public) main trunk is dead, age unknown but assumed to 56 or less. |
| Habitat | Usually an understory shrub in open rocky woodlands, along borders of forests and or along stream banks. |
| Bark/Stem Description | Bark is gray with vertical lines that run across the base, these lines are darkish in colouration. |
| Leaf Description | Leaves are oval obovate with a finely tooth serrated margin with the base of the leaf being slightly cordate in shape with a pointed apex. The leaves and petiole when young are a reddish colour with fine small hairs that cover them, these eventually go away as the plant ages. |
| Flower Description | Flowers are small white and in racemes of 6-14 which develop at the tips of the shoots. Each individual flower is about 1’ inch and are consisting of 5 narrow white pedals each. A flower consists of a pistil with a single style, a small tubular calyx with five teeth, and approximately 20 stamens. The calyx is light green and has small wooly hairs on them, these hairs are appropriate for identifying the Amelanchier species apart. The flowers emerge about at the same time of the leaves in the early to mid spring in April and may. |
| Fruit Description | The fruits are small 6 – 11 millimetre globoid pomes, that become ripe in the summer, as they ripen they become a reddish purplish colour. They can be eaten, although they are bland and dry tasting, but sometimes sweet. Each fruit contains 4 to 10 seeds. |
| Colour Description | The leaves turn a nice reddish orange colour in the fall around mid October. Other wise the tree is a nice slight dark green colour. |
| Texture Description | Leaves are glabrous in texture when fully developed, soft with fine small hairs when young in spring. |