Horticultural Highlight: Red Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum)

Red Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum) is one powerful pollinator plant. They are an early blooming shrub, providing early-emerging pollinators like bumble bees & mason bees an important nectar & pollen source when not a lot of other plants are not in bloom.

This early blooming plant also attracts hummingbirds & bush tits. It is considered a prized food source for the rufous hummingbird.  Their leaves are a food source for butterfly larvae & their berries are eaten by songbirds like the American Robin & Cedar waxwings. 

It can grow in a variety of sites but does best in a dry woodland garden. Companion plant with Mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii) , Buttercup Winterhazel (Corylopsis pauciflora), Evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) & sword fern (polystichum munitum) and lots of bulbs.