Has anyone seen a gooseberry Hybrid like this?

I collected the seeds from my gooseberry plant that I loved while living in Germany. However I am new to growing I had no clue that a currant and a gooseberry could cross at the time. My German neighbors had loads of currants in their tiny back and front yards. I have no clue what type crossed with my gooseberry. Here’s the kicker I have at least four different types of leaf shapes on all the seeds tha came up this year. However this is the most interesting one of them all. Has anyone ever seen a gooseberry hybrid like this. All my plants have thorns like my gooseberry plant had too. My gooseberry plant I had in Germany was very tasteful and ripened to a burgundy color.

2 Likes

Hmm?! Looks like a shape loving plat called Astilbe.

2 Likes

I’m sure I won’t know what I truly have on my hands for a couple more years. Some of my other gooseberries have leaves that kinda look like Crandall currants. They all came from the same piece of fruit. I’ve been so intertained with these in my garden this year. I’ll look up the plant you suggested too.

1 Like

Then there’s this one that looks different too.

1 Like

Then there is the leaf shape that looks the closest to the parent plant.

1 Like

These are all my babies that came from one piece of gooseberry fruit. I’ll be keeping them all to see what each one developes fruit wise.

3 Likes

If what you have are gooseberry/current crosses they are likely to be sterile and not produce fruit unfortunately…

[quote]Given their obvious morphological similarities, the idea of crossing currants and gooseberries probably occurred almost as soon as people began developing intentional hybrid fruit. No doubt more than a few attempts were fueled by the gooseberry breeding craze which swept England in 1800’s (a worthy subject for a later post).Perhaps the first was the product of a Mr. W. Culverwell, an Englishman who in 1880 produced what was called Ribes culverwelli by crossing a black currant with a gooseberry. Producing hybrid seedlings turned out not to be too terribly hard, so long as the black currant was used as the female parent.

Such crosses yielded a range of diploid progeny, with a wide range of characteristics, some resembling their currant parent, some gooseberries, many somewhere in between. Unfortunately, they all had one thing in common: they were virtually sterile. Those that did set fruit did so parthenocarpically (ie, without fertilization) and so were dead ends when it came to breeding.

The Germans made some of the most concerted efforts, and in 1926 Paul Lorenz began making crosses at Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. By World War II he had over 1,000 F1 seedlings growing, but unfortunately in the chaos and destruction of the war, only eight plants remained. In 1946, these survivors were incorporated into a program at the newly founded Erwin Baur Institute.

It was there that Rudolf Bauer finally struck upon a method of generating fertile hybrids between black currants and gooseberries. By treating the sterile hybrids with a solution of colchicine, he was able to restore fertility.[/quote]

http://thefruitblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/fruit-genetics-friday-5-jostaberry.html

It seems more likely that what you have are mostly just gooseberry crosses (plus a few infiltrators…) and that they are likely to be generally similar to the parent you liked.

2 Likes

Thank you. I was also wondering about weather or not a couple could end up sterile. Even if little to no fruit grows on the first image I shared it’s a beautiful plant. The info you shared is very helpful. Thanks again.

1 Like

We have Josta berries at home that cropped reasonably. Taste is closer to a black currant.
Bull dozer ran over them in 2011, so not sure how well they are recovering. Jostas are gooseberry black currant crosses.

2 Likes

Bglaze, how did your plants do? Are they still growing? Hope so. Sue

2 Likes