Black chokeberry

Mespilus arbutifolia Linnaeus var. melanocarpa Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Amer. 1: 292. 1803; Aronia nigra (Willdenow) Koehne; Photinia melanocarpa (Michaux) K. R. Robertson & J. B. Phipps; Pyrus arbutifolia (Linnaeus) Linnaeus f. var. nigra Willdenow; P. melanocarpa (Michaux) Willdenow; Sorbus melanocarpa (Michaux) Heynhold

Stems glabrous or glabrescent. Leaves pale green abaxially, dark green and shiny adaxially, becoming scarlet; blade 2.5–7 × 2.5–3.5 cm, apex subacute to acuminate or apiculate, surfaces glabrous or glabrescent, adaxial midrib stipitate-glandular. Flowers sweet-scented; hypanthium glabrous; sepal margins glabrous; anthers yellow to purplish red. Pomes black, glabrous, taste acid and bitter. 2n = 34, 68.

Flowering Mar–Jun; fruiting Sep–Nov. Swamps, bogs, wet thickets, margins of ponds and lakes, beaver ponds, woods, moist high-elevation forests, rock outcrops; 0–2000 m; N.B., Nfld. and Labr. (Nfld.), N.S., Ont., P.E.I., Que.; Ala., Ark., Conn., Del., D.C., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Ky., Maine, Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Mo., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Pa., R.I., S.C., Tenn., Vt., Va., W.Va., Wis.