This site concerns Amelanchier, a member of the Rosaceae (rose family). The purpose of this site is to present information about the systematics and evolution of these attractive small trees and shrubs, which are commonly called shadbushes, serviceberries, juneberries, sugarplums, and numerous other common names.
      Amelanchier grows primarily in early successional habitats of the North Temperate Zone. The genus is most diverse taxomically in North America, especially in the northern United States and southern Canada, and is native to every state of the United States except Hawaii. These plants are valued horticulturally, and their fruits are important to wildlife. The systematics (taxonomy) of shadbushes has long perplexed botanists, horticulturalists, and others, as suggested by the range in number of species recognized in the genus from 6 to 33 in two recent publications (Landry 1975, Phipps et al. 1991; see references on Systematics page). A major source of complexity comes from the occurrence of apomixis (asexual seed production), polyploidy, and hybridization (see Evolution page).

Acknowledgements
      Much of the systematics portion of this website is derived from the treatment of Amelanchier in the Flora of North America, and we thank our coauthors, Alison Dibble and Chris Frye, for their contributions to this treatment (see full citation of this reference below) and Luc Brouillet, editor for this FNA volume, for his support and guidance during the preparation of this treatment. For many contributions during field and laboratory work on Amelanchier, we are indebted to Bruce Baldwin, Scott Bergquist, Margaret Campbell, Alison Dibble, Tim Dickinson, MIchael Donoghue, Torsten Eriksson, Chris Frye, Arthur Gilman, Craig Greene, Arthur Haines, Bill Halteman, Jean Higgins, Fay Hyland, Dick Neubauer, Camilla Shannon, Tom Vining, Jill Weber, David Werier, Marty Wojciechowski, and Wes Wright. We thank the Biology New Media Lab of the University of Maine for help in establishing this website and the National Science Foundation as well as the Maine Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station for financial support of some of the research represented at this site.