• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Forager | Chef
  • Home
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Interviews
  • Partnerships
  • Contact
menu icon
go to homepage
  • Home
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Interviews
  • Partnerships
  • Contact
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
  • subscribe
    search icon
    Homepage link
    • Home
    • About
    • Recipes
    • Interviews
    • Partnerships
    • Contact
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
  • ×
    Home » Wild Fruit Varieties

    Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa):

    Published: Jan 27, 2024 Modified: Mar 26, 2024 Author: Alan Bergo

    A beautiful native fruit shrub perfect for yards, gardens and landscaping with a reputation as a nutritional powerhouse. Black chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa) are an under-used fruit every gardener and forager should know about. Read on and I'll explain what they are and how you can use this fascinating, nutritious fruit.

    Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) is a great native plant to know.

    What are Aronia Berries?

    Aronia berries (Aronia spp) are the fruit of a small to medium-sized shrub native to Eastern North America. In the wild aronia plants grow near swampy and wet soils, and occasionally dry places. They tend to prefer sandy soil and can tolerate partial shade but do best in full sun.

    The fruit of the plant is edible and enjoyed by wildlife, but it has an off-putting, granular texture and a strong, astringent taste. Besides food, the rich color of the berries has been used as a natural dye by Native Americans.

    Aronia shrubs showing their fall foliage.
    Aronia shrubs showing their fall foliage.

    Aronia plants are easy to care for and produce a prolific amount of fruit relative to their size. Unlike other foraged fruit like wild blueberries you can harvest in the wild, the easiest place to find chokeberries is probably in landscaping or a friend's yard.

    There's a number of different aronia cultivars available to grow. A few years ago I learned from Sam Thayer that unlike truly wild varieties, cultivars have been blended with mountain ash / rowanberry genetics (Sorbus spp) to increase the size of the fruit. The most common cultivar I see planted in landscaping is Viking, but Iroquois Beauty and Autumn Magic are two others you might come across.

    Aronia berries spilling from a brown paper bag on a table.
    You can harvest whole clusters of fruit or strip them from the racemes.

    The bountiful clusters of dark, black fruit produced by the plant are edible and enjoyed by wildlife and humans. But there's a catch: the fruit has an astringent flavor and an off-putting, granular texture. Luckily there's ways to get around it in the kitchen which we'll get into further on.

    (Potential) Chokeberry Benefits

    I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist, but the health benefits of chokeberries are one of the attributes the plant is most prized for. Many people consider the fruit a healthy "super food" due to it's high concentration of anthocyanins and antioxidants.

    Anthocyanins are compounds that provide the dark pigmentation of fruits like blueberries. Aronia berries are also rich in antioxidants, containing even more than blueberries.

    From the National Institute of Health:

    Aronia berries are rich in antioxidant phenolic compounds that show anti-inflammatory activity, which may be translated into potential preventive and therapeutic effects for metabolic disorder, as well as for cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular, kidney, and liver diseases.

    Chokeberry Identification

    If you've heard of chokeberry trees it's a misnomer-the plant is a small shrub, often knee to waist-high when seen in landscaping, but they can grow taller. In the wild the plant can grow to be 3-8 feet tall. In the spring white flowers appear. Like other fruits, noticing the flowers in the spring is a good way to plan future harvests.

    White aronia melanocarpa flowers in the spring.
    One way to find plants is to notice their white flowers in spring.

    Leaves

    The leaves of the plant resemble other fruit shrubs which can make them a little tricky to pick out if the flowers or fruit aren't showing. They're arranged alternately on the branch, have serrated edges and a gentle fold along the midvein.

    Close up image of chokeberry leaves (Aronia melanocarpa) showing serrated edges.
    Aronia leaves are dark green, alternate, ovate in shape, and have serrated edges.

    Fruit

    Clusters of juicy, blue-black fruit are borne on clusters hanging from reddish stems (racemes). One of the most notable characteristics is the distinctive 5-pointed fold or crimp on the end.

    A close up image of Aronia melanocarpa showing the 5 pointed fold and calyx.
    Note the 5-pointed fold on the end of the berries.

    The seeds are perfectly round, fleshy, and filled with many soft seeds that are barely noticeable when eating.

    Ripe black chokeberries on the branch in the summer (Aronia melanocarpa).
    As the season goes on some fruit can shrivel a bit.

    The fruits bares a resemblance mountain ash berries, which could be confused with red aronia berries (Aronia arbutifolia), if they grew from a tree instead of a shrub.

    Red chokeberries (Aronia arbutifolia) growing on a branch in landscaping.
    Red chokeberries (Aronia arbutifolia).

    Chokeberries are often planted in landscaping making them perfect for urban foraging. Keep your eyes peeled for small shrubs with black berries and you can easily harvest aronia seeds to grow your own or cook with.

    Look A Likes

    Aronia plants are easy to identify, but there are two specific look a likes they're often confused with.

    Chokecherry vs Chokeberry

    Likely the plant most commonly confused with chokeberries are chokecherries. The names are similar and both are a dark black when perfectly ripe. But if you look closely the plants are very different.

    First and foremost, cherries are stone fruits and have a pit where aronia do not. Secondly, aronia grow in clusters of drooping fruit while chokecherries are arranged alternately on the racemes.

    An infographic comparing the differences of chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) and chokeberries (aronia).
    Ripe chokecherry vs chokeberry fruits.

    Chokeberry vs Buckthorn

    I'll share an embarrassing secret with you. Many years ago now I went to my favorite disc golf park and picked a bunch of aronia berries. Unfortunately I'd harvested buckthorn, and proceeded to make a foul tasting jelly.

    A close up image of common buckthorn berries growing on a branch (Rhamnus cathartica) .
    Common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica).

    In hindsight my error is easy to see. Buckthorn is very different from aronia, but both plants are small shrubs that produce black fruit. But, buckthorn berries do not have the red stems like aronia, and the taste is foul and bitter. The clusters of fruit also appear to hug the branches.

    When To Harvest Aronia Berries

    Typically the berries are harvested in the fall. They're ripe when they're completely black. As the season progresses the fruit can start to develop wrinkles and lose juice but it doesn't affect the quality of the fruit.

    A large tub filled with ripe chokeberries and a few leaves.
    It's easy to gather a large amount of fruit in a small amount of time.

    One of the benefits of chokeberries is that they can be harvested nearly all year long. The fruit will stay on the plant through the winter and birds often only eat it when there's nothing else left in my experience. As the fruit isn't generally consumed but instead made into juice they're perfect berries to forage in the winter.

    Black chokeberries seen on a plant in the winter still available for harvest in landscaping.
    Viking chokeberries planted in landscaping at my local Goodwill.

    Harvesting the fruit is easy. You can strip the whole fruit from the plant or remove the berries while still attached to the racemes. I prefer to remove the berries individually to save time processing them afterward. Depending on where you harvest they can be very clean and may not need to be washed.

    How to Cook Aronia Berries

    Cooking chokeberries is a bit of a misnomer. People will say they can be used for smoothies, syrup, pies, juice, muffins. This is technically true, but you won't be adding them to salads or yogurt like you would a handful of blueberries.

    The astringent taste and unpleasant, tough, granular texture is off-putting to most. This is why aronia berries aren't generally cooked like you would other fruits.

    Aronia hot pepper jelly on crackers with goat cheese next to a jar of jelly and a bowl of crackers.
    Aronia hot pepper jelly is a great thing to make.

    Chokeberry Juice

    Where most fruit are used to make jams, jellies and preserves, juice is the main product derived from the fruit. Aronia juice is a very popular product in Eastern Europe where the majority of it is sold but it hasn't become mainstream in the United States, yet.

    One very important thing to know is that aronia juice can be a strong laxative for some people. I've never had a problem with it personally, but I almost always mix it with other things as opposed to drinking it straight.

    There's essentially two different ways to make the juice. Pureeing the fruit cold in water will bypass the astringency but won't give as rich of a color as if the berries are heated in liquid. The only catch is that cooking the fruit releases tannins, making it more difficult to drink on its own.

    Besides juice, a blender is a useful tool for cooking with aronia berries if you want to eat the fruit. Pureeing the fruit bypasses the rough texture and lends a rich purple color to anything the fruit is used in. You can use the leftover pulp to make purple fruit scrap vinegar.

    My chokeberry vinaigrette is a great example, and aronia smoothies are also popular way to enjoy the fruit.

    How to Preserve Chokeberries

    The fall is a busy season for foragers. One of the best attributes of many wild fruits is that they can be put in the freezer to save time, and chokeberries are no different. If you want to buy chokeberries out of season most of the time they'll be frozen.

    Frozen Aronia Berries

    To freeze chokeberries I use the "IQF" (individually quick frozen) technique. Put the berries on a baking sheet lined with parchment and freeze them.

    Once the berries are frozen they're transferred to zip top bags or other containers and will last for years.

    Aronia Powder

    Drying or dehydrating aronia fruit is another preservation technique I use often and one more people should know about. Dehydrating the fruit curbs some of the astringency, making them much more palatable and allowing the whole fruit to be consumed.

    If you're wondering how you might use fruit powder there's lots of things to do with it. Here's a few examples of things I've done over the years.

    Add a tablespoon of powder to a smoothie for a beautiful purple color.

    • Use the powder to coat fruit truffles.
    • Add it to fruit sauces and vinaigrettes.
    • Add the powder to baked goods and quickbreads like aronia muffins.
    • Use it as a natural purple food coloring for pickles. Use 1 tablespoon of chokeberry powder for each pint jar.

    More Native Fruits

    • Nannyberries
    • Wild Blueberries
    • Highbush Cranberries

    Resources and Links

    • Buy Frozen Aroniaberries
    • Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Wild Plants of Eastern North America
    • Aronia Berry Festival
    « Purple Prairie Clover
    Homemade Smoked Chicken Andouille Sausage »

    Reader Interactions

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Recipe Rating




    Primary Sidebar

    Chef Alan Bergo

    HI, I'm Alan: James Beard Award-winning Chef, Author, Show Host and Forager. I've been writing about cooking wild food here for over a decade. Let me show you why foraging is the most delicious thing you'll ever do.

    More about me →

    Get The Book

    the forager chef's book of flora
    The Forager Chefs Book of Flora

    As Seen On

    An image showing many different brands and media companies forager chef alan bergo has worked with.

    Footer

    Privacy

    Subscribe

    Be the first to hear what I'm doing

    Contact

    As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    Copyright © 2025 Forager | Chef LLC® Accessibility Statement