Plant Species of the Bright Angel Trail: Gooseberry, Ribes sp.
See Plant Guide to Bright Angel Trail for an introduction to this page.
Characteristics
Identification status: Identified only to the subset of gooseberries (stems with prickles) with the Ribes genus.
There were zillions of specimens of this gooseberry lining the trail, but not a single one had any fruit or flower remnants that could be used to identify the species.
There are four gooseberry species at the Grand Canyon; two of them, Ribes montigenum and R. inerme are known only from the North Rim. Both of the other two species, R. leptanthum and R. velutinum, are vouchered from the Bright Angel Trail.
The McDougall key to separate these two species is:
9. Berries yellow at maturity; leaves hairy ... desert gooseberry, R. velutinum
9'. Berries black or dark red at maturity; leaves smooth or nearly so.... trumpet gooseberry, R. leptanthum.
I examined many leaves all along the trail; every leaf I examined was puberulent, meaning that the hairs could only be seen with a microscope. This is almost dead between "hairy" and "smooth or nearly so", making the determination less than clear.
The Kearney and Peebles key is, in part:
9. ...; herbage almost tomentose; stems without bristles; spines straw-colored, mostly straight and slender, up to 2 cm. long.... R. velutinum
9'. ...; herbage glabrous or moderately pubescent; stems sometimes bristly but commonly not so; spines yellowish brown to brownish gray (leads to R. leptanthum).
If one can trust this key for late-season leaves, the determination would be R. leptanthum. However, I've been burned too many times by trying to deduce a Ribes determination solely from leaves, so I will wait for flowers and/or fruit to confirm the determination.
Here are pictures of the two species for comparison from SEINet: R. leptanthum and R. velutinum.
First occurrence on Bright Angel Trail: mile 0.00, elevation 6845 feet (2086 m).
Number of plants along Trail: This species is nearly ubiquitous along the trail; at least 99 plants were found in at least 9 different locations in September 2007. This species is so common that it shows up by accident in pictures of several other taxa farther along the trail.
Pictures
From 5 September 2007, mile 0.00. This plant is in the shade of the Pinus edulis at the trailhead.
References
See Resources for Grand Canyon Flora for further information on most of these references. Entries in the second column are either the name used in that source or a page reference. The name is linked to online pages when available. If a given reference does not contain this taxon, the entry is either left blank or contains a hyphen.