American Serviceberry In Our Neighborhood

A few days ago, I shared the list of bare root trees that The Growing Place is taking pre-orders on during the month of March and included on that list was something called an American Serviceberry Autumn Brilliance.   I had not previously come across that particular variety, but due to the whole 'social distancing' dynamic going on this past week, we've done a few family walks down to the park and pond near us.  On one of those recent walks, I saw this multi-stemmed shrub (or what I figured was a shrub) and then noticed the little yellow tag on one of the branches.  I peep'd at it.  And did a double-take. 

It is an American Serviceberry.  Funny, right?  Having not even heard of such a tree/shrub before this week, now I've come across it twice in five days.  (Note:  I've blurred out the house in the photo just to provide some semblance of privacy here...)

This specimen on our block is heavily multi-stemmed - as you can see.  It has branching very low on the larger limbs/trunks.   And since it hasn't broken dormancy, it looks awfully bare.  But, I've now looked around to see what this thing might look like when it comes alive.  The Growing place describes it as "wet tolerant" and from what I know of the grading of the property, it may be a wet spot, so it is living up to its billing. 

First...because of the name - you guess'd it:  they put on a nice Fall show.  Here's a photo from the Tree Farm:

Via the Tree Farm here.  This is not my photo.   

And it puts on a Spring show, too.  With white flowers.  Here's a photo I found on Pinterest via Google Image search:

Not my photo.  Via Pinterest here. 

One thing that I'm observing in both of those reference photos is that the trees that I am seeing are indeed, multi-stemmed.  But, they have FAR FEWER stems than the tree on our block.  Wonder if that's a result of pruning?  Or, perhaps that's a result of species selection.  We have a multi-trunk flowering tree in our front yard (Sauce Magnolia), but I've worked to limb it up a little bit to try to shape it into a more tree-like specimen.  You can see the latest version of that in the post here.