An unarmed deciduous shrub 5 or 6 ft high; young shoots and leaf-stalks covered with stiff, gland-tipped sticky hairs. Leaves of the red currant size and shape, but shining green and with bristly down on the nerves beneath; stalk 1⁄2 to 1 in. long. Flowers unisexual, the sexes on different plants, and produced on somewhat erect racemes 1 to 2 in. long; they are green suffused with red and covered with viscid hairs. Fruits red, downy.
Native mainly of S.W. Asia, but extending into S.E. Europe; in cultivation 1813. It is a species of little garden value, allied to R. alpinum, but in that species the fruits are glabrous and the stems and leaves almost so; also the leaf-buds are acute and elongate, broader and obtuse in R. orientale. The R. resinosum of Pursh, long thought to be a native of N. America, and figured as such in Bot. Mag., t. 1583, is really this species.