Last month, I noticed a surge in the number of avian visitors to the shrub outside my kitchen window. Narrow branches quivered with the arrival of house finches, gray catbirds, northern cardinals, and other species residing in Washington, DC. The birds shared a common interest: small, succulent fruits whose deep red and purple hues stood out against the backdrop of green, elliptical leaves. The feathered diners craned their necks to nibble on the botanical buffet, bills tinted red by the juice that oozed from every bite.

The host of the feast was a member of the genus Amelanchier, which encompasses more than twenty species of deciduous shrubs and small trees widely known as juneberry, serviceberry, shadbush, or saskatoon. These plants have long been celebrated for sustaining people, pollinators, and birds each spring and summer. For North American Indigenous communities in particular, they represent a network of abundance, gratitude, and reciprocity.

Native to eastern North America, Amelanchier species acquired several common names as they spread across the continent. “Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance,” writes Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer in her essay on the juneberry.

“Juneberry” is a nod to the month in which the plant’s fruit typically ripens across much of North America. According to Kimmerer, “serviceberry” derives from Sorbus, an old name for its rose family. Others attribute the origin of “serviceberry” to the burial services that concurred with the appearance of the plant’s clustered flowers after a cold winter. “When its white flowers were in bloom, it meant the soil was soft enough to dig graves,” explains garden writer Jessica Damiano. Another name, “shadbush,” refers to the seasonal shad fish runs that historically coincided with the plant’s flowering or fruiting periods, and “saskatoon” is reportedly an anglicization of the Cree language word “misâskwatômin,” which translates as “the fruit of the tree of many branches.”

For millennia, Indigenous peoples in North America, and later European colonists, derived part of their year-round sustenance from juneberry. The fruits were harvested in great quantities, dried, and pounded together with venison or bison and rendered fat to make pemmican, a calorie-rich, preserved food. Akin to today’s energy bars, pemmican was easily carried, consumed, or traded across different localities and cultures. Dried juneberries were also served in special dishes alongside other ingredients, such as avalanche lily bulbs, deer fat, salmon eggs, or black tree lichen to provide “highly nutritious and well-balanced food combinations,” write Nancy J. Turner, Marianne Boelscher Ignace, Ronald Ignace in their study of traditional ecological knowledge in British Columbia.

First Nations and Native American communities also used parts of the plant for medicine. Stomach ailments called for juneberry juice, ripe fruits were incorporated into eye and ear drops, and boiled bark served as a disinfectant, writes a team led by agricultural scientist Dario Donno. Women sometimes drank a tea of juneberry twigs and stems to recover from childbirth, and a tonic made from the plant’s bark was thought to hasten the discharge of the placenta. Furthermore, Indigenous peoples used Amelanchier branches to craft arrow shafts, baskets, ropes, fish traps, and tools for unearthing root crops, writes Jeffrey A. Hart.

Today, small-scale harvests of juneberries are often eaten by the handful or incorporated into pies, jams, and wines. The fruit tastes like a cross between blueberries and cherries with a hint of almond. “Serviceberries are among the few native fruits in North America that are both edible and delicious, making them a sought-after treat for foragers and home gardeners alike,” notes Vince Drader, who writes for a nonprofit working to plant and protect trees in DC.

Amelanchier species are rooted in North American history, but they have gained prominence on other continents as well. Many juneberries have been introduced to Europe, Asia, and Africa as prized ornamental plants, with charming spring flowers, summerlong fruits, and brilliant red-orange foliage in fall. Very few Amelanchier species are native to these regions; Amelanchier ovalis, for example, is the only naturally occurring member of the genus in Europe. The shrub is said to produce the largest flowers of any Amelanchier species, but its berries taste rather bland unless processed into preserves or spirits. Compounds in the plant’s twigs, leaves, and bark have also been recognized for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

As evidenced by the birds at my window, the significance of these plants extends far beyond people. Amelanchier flowers sustain bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Deer and moose munch on the shrub’s leaves and twigs. Nearly fifty species of North American birds rely on calories from juneberries during their breeding season.

In her latest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Kimmerer argues that humans have a lot to learn from these ecological interactions. She portrays juneberries and other natural resources not as commodities to be exploited but as gifts from the Earth that elicit gratitude and reciprocity. For instance, the insects that feast on juneberry flowers return the favor by carrying pollen to other blossoms. The birds that pick on suspended fruits stimulate seed germination and dispersal. Humans who savor the taste of juneberries might care for the plant by weeding or watering or by donating to a local land trust that protects its habitat.

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Kimmerer contrasts the juneberry’s “system of redistribution of wealth based on abundance and the pleasure of sharing” with capitalist economies that operate on scarcity, competition, and commodification. She advocates for a gift economy where goods and services are given without an explicit agreement for future rewards, asking readers to reimagine currencies of exchange using the juneberry as their guide.

“To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people, we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants,” Kimmerer concludes.

Other thinkers have reflected on the generosity of the shrub and its fruit. In 1997, for instance, philosopher and educator Randall Dana Ulveland described introducing his four-month-old niece to the plant, just as his mother had done for him. In passing down the tradition of harvesting juneberries, he gifted his niece the sweetness of the fruit, a deeper familial connection, and a new relationship to the plant world.

“We touch them; they touch us back. I share my knowing-the-way to reach toward them and the way to pull them off the branch,” he wrote. “I dwell in all that has been gathered together to allow saskatoons to show themselves meaningfully.”

Delving into the history of Amelanchier transformed the humble plant that feeds my local birds into an agent of connection that has forged relationships between people, plants, and wildlife for thousands of years. The Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Initiative seeks to document these connections to reframe the way we see the role of plants in human society.

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