Ribes echinellum

Miccosukee gooseberry is one of the rarest shrubs in the Southeast, a federally threatened native known from just two places on earth: a single site in McCormick County, South Carolina, and another in Jefferson County, Florida. The low, arching shrub, two to four feet tall, carries spiny branches and forms small thickets on shaded hardwood-forest hillsides, and small, long-petaled, creamy flowers hang from the branches in their season, followed by half-inch greenish fruits armored with soft, flexible spines.

The plant keeps an unusual calendar. Where most shrubs rest in winter, Miccosukee gooseberry leafs out in fall, grows and flowers through the cool months, and drops the leaves in summer, a winter-green rhythm suited to the mild, shaded slopes the species calls home. That habit makes the shrub a curiosity as much as a rarity, and one that fits naturally into a shaded woodland planting that echoes the wild sites.

Growing this gooseberry is an act of conservation. As a federally listed threatened species, the plant may not be sold across state lines, so Woodlanders offers the shrub only within the home region, and every garden plant helps hold a critically narrow species in cultivation. The plant has grown in the Woodlanders garden in Aiken for many years, proof that a shrub so scarce in the wild is, given the right shaded, wooded site, surprisingly easy to please.

Plant Miccosukee gooseberry on a shaded hillside or woodland slope in humus-rich soil, the kind of dappled hardwood-forest setting where the species grows wild. Pair with ferns, native woodland companions, and other shade lovers, give room for the low, arching, thicket-forming habit, and site the plant where the winter growth and the odd spiny fruit can be appreciated at close range. A collector's conservation plant of real botanical importance.