Fuchsia-flowered gooseberry is an evergreen shrub growing from 3' to 6' tall with long spreading bristly branches that have three stout, 3/8" to 3/4" spines at each node.  The leaves are alternate, roundish, somewhat lobed to serrate, dark green and shiny above and lighter green beneath, 1" to 1-1/2" wide, and subglabrous to ± glandular-hairy. The flowers are drooping in groups of 1-4 with reddish bracts and bristly pedicels. The ovary is inferior, spheric, and glandular-bristly, and there are four red, ligulate sepals to 3/8" long, four red petals about as long with inward-curling margins, and four well-exserted stamens from 1" to 1-1/4" long.  The fruit is a glandular-bristly red to orange berry about 3/8" in diameter.  Fuchsia-flowered gooseberry is a very common and beautiful shrub found in shaded canyons and woodlands to 1500' in coastal sage scrub and chaparral, blooming from January to May and ranging from northern Baja to Santa Clara Co.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Ribes 2) speciosum.
Pronunciation: RIE-bees spes-ee-OH-sum.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.