Not very long. They're basically the North American analog to Japanese cherries, have been recommended as a replacement for them.

Thank you for responding. I appreciate it. When you say not very long, are we talking just days or a couple weeks?

Depends on the weather, but at most a couple of weeks.

both pnw answers .... are the buds subject to cold damage??? ... are flower shows ever ruined???

any flower show is weather dependent .... if early ... and you get a minor heat wave.. they can pop ... then get frosted ....

or rain storms... or any other event ...

but i am betting these are rather bulletproof.. but i have no experience ...

ken

I have one, forget the cultivar.

Seems the flowers are good for a week or so. I have not noticed any cold damage here....none, no dead branch tips ever now that I think about it.

I'm going to order 2 for our front yard. They're beautiful in the fall, too.

The fall color and flowers are short lived for most Amelanchier.
Both last about 2 weeks in WI, sometimes less on the flowers.

Good choice either way as it has bloom, fall color, berries and smooth bark for multi seasonal interest.

Depending on the species some want consistent moisture and appreciate some afternoon shade.

Bothersome pest and disease problems are always possible as they are Rose Family trees and shrubs. For example one recent year an assortment of them I planted at one location was hit by a heavy rust infestation. Luckily it did not reoccur the following year.

The show is fairly short here too. Rain and wind can finish off the blossom in a week. Fall colour is often non existent if the weather is dull and the berries are eaten almost immediately. I'd grow them if I had a lot of space and a semi woodland setting and if I already had all the Magnolias, Crataegus, Prunus and Malus I wanted. Obviously all that applies only to my climate which is very different from yours.

Here they last longest if it stays cool and dry for the whole bloom period. But even when they only bloom for a week, for me they have a great value since they are so welcome after a long winter. Most often it's closer to two weeks. I also like the color of the emerging leaves and the fall color, and as Whaas mentioned, the smooth gray bark and open branching is nice in winter. I don't think I've seen berries on them, though I don't have one close to the house. Perhaps the birds are too quick or it's chilly enough here that they may not always be pollinated.

I have a princess diana serviceberry. With our warm February, it might bloom soon. I'll take some pics when it does.

The wild ones around here flower for only a short time -- not even a week.

I was going to order Amelanchier Serviceberry at Greenwood. They have excellent online feedback, and they answered a brief question I asked them, via email, within a minute or so. So I would gladly do business with them.

But Autumn Brilliance, I've read, is much better all around, and that Amelanchier can be leggy, however, Greenwood doesn't offer Autumn Brilliance.

I'd hate to pay $100 each from Sooner, but when I checked Nature Hills' feedback, wow! They have so much negative feedback I'm surprised they haven't been investigated for frauding customers, and everywhere else sells Autumn Brilliance bareroot. I don't want to buy bareroot if I absolutely don't have to. Everything I've ever planted that was potted, has thrived immensely,, and almost everything I planted bareroot, died.

I know that isn't what a lot of people experience, but it's been my experience. And to be frank, i like planting on my schedule, not on Mother Nature's. I like to wait til a nice 60 degree day and plant totally relaxed, not rushing because it's freezing outside, or because it's rained for 3 days in a row, so it must be planted NOW.

Is $99 a little steep to any of you for a 3- year plant? Is Sooner the only place to get a potted Serviceberry? If it is, I'll suck it up and buy it, but I hope to find a potted Serviceberry a little less expensive.

I would only pay that price if i absolutely wanted one and could not get it any where else. Have you tried to see if any local nurseries around you can get it in?

There's only one nursery local to me and I don't want to buy from her again. I bought two lilacs a few years ago from her and they were the most pot-bound mess I'd ever seen in my life. I don't believe she cares for her plants in an acceptable manner. I know Sooner offers a health guarantee for the trees, so that's probably where I'll end up getting them.

I am amazed at that price. A lamarckii is about $25 here. A canadensis is cheaper. a 6 ft Autumn Brilliance is about $50.

I have Autumn Brilliance - 2 clump, 2 single-stem. Fall color was great, lasted a few weeks. The blooms are fleeting... the berries even more so. But it's so much fun to watch the robins grabbing them as soon as they are a little bit ripe. If you're quick you can get one and taste it. Hopefully you can plant it where you can watch the birds in action.

That $99 is presumably for something more than a 3 year old seedling that has been creeping along as seed raised trees often do in the early years. Commercial growers are interested in bringing stock along as fast as possible so they can maximize the frequency of cropping their fields, thereby getting the highest possible return from the land. For example one year a man that had supplied it with weeping crab apples came to a nursery where I was working and showed a couple of us that each tree represented a 2 year process - the budding of the cultivar near the ground and the training up of the trunk taking up the first year, the growing of the side branches at the top of the trunk the second. So 3 years in the instance of the service-berry probably corresponds more or less to the time it took to produce a typical, above head height garden center sized specimen.

I paid $100 for my 20 gallon serviceberry.

You only want to buy from sooner if its fresh stock and a rare cultivar. I'll leave it at that without going on a tangent.

Autumn Brilliance is widely available with most local nurseries so its usually not available via mail order.. I can get a 1.75" caliper tree for another $25 to put it into perspective.

Could you drive a bit further to find a different nursery? You might be surprised what you find. I've called JF Schmidt (a wholesale grower) and they were kind enough to give me multiple nurseries in my area, several I've never heard of that where within a 1 hour drive.

Pretty much every local nursery around here has either Robin Hill or Autumn Brilliance in stock. I have a Robin Hill planted as a foundation tree in the front yard. It is probably the slowest growing tree I have, slower than my kousa dogwoods and maybe even my ginkgo. So buy as big as you can. I like serviceberries, but I agree with the general recommendation that they fit best in naturalized settings, and are not ideal in neat beds or in foundations next to buildings. Decent all around tree, but no single characteristic will jump out at you.

BTW, I love Sooner and have had a lot of success with trees purchased there. I have received the occasional scraggly looking seedling from them, but the trees have always blown up into champs in year two without fail. No other nursery comes close to their selection of 5 gallon containers.

my 3 service berry trees are beautiful. However the trunks are thin while the tops are full. What should I do now that they are about 20 years old? ( I think I should have fertilized more 18 years ago ) Is there any help now? Do I have them topped?

hey ilove .... how about an update .. not in this post ... of all your spring experiments .. and how it all worked out ... ken

ann, amelanchiers never develop 'fat' trunks like say a maple or elm would. So the trunks on your trees may be perfectly normal for their age and size. Can you post any photos?

btw, neither topping or fertilizing would have any effect on trunk development anyway.

I have several "Canadian Serviceberry" trees. Lovely little (little!) trees in spring, summer, and fall. Bloom is short (less than 2 weeks) - like most other flowering trees. (Once had a gorgeous profusion crab apple that looked nice only 2 days.) Beautiful fall colour. Mine are between 3 and 5 years old and VERY slow growing. But I got these trees because I want small trees.