Aronia

Aronia, commonly called chokeberry, is native to North America, where three of the four recognized species in the genus grow wild, alongside one European species. Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa), the ancestor of most cultivated aronia grown today, has a genuinely unusual documented history: unlike most other berry crops with long culinary traditions, aronia spread from America to Europe specifically because of interest in it as an ornamental plant, only later being recognized and cultivated seriously for its fruit, now grown commercially in parts of Europe and North America. It is real, worth noting for foragers, that aronia is sometimes confused with common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), an unrelated, mildly toxic, laxative plant — a real identification hazard, not a myth.