What Type of Gooseberry Bushes do I have?!

[TheMistress666]

I 'inherited' one from my mother in law, which she dug up and we put in our garden, and i also bought one, they both look so different... none of them had any labels on them so im really confused.

The one I bought is a few feet tall, with a long stem and a few branches on it with green fruits on (still rock hard but a decent size) and i think is a Ribes Uva Crispa (Greenfinch) the one MiL gave us is more like a bush with is spreading outward more than up, and the berries are fewer, not as mature but still green, but there are still some small pink flowers on it too

Im new to all this GYO, but im told that gooseberries arent necessarily always green (as i thought) but are often yellow/golden and pinky red so how do i know what varieties I have? i tried usual plant buying sites, but they only tend to show a picture of the actual fruit rather than what the tree/bush itself looks like?!

[veggiechicken]

Hello and welcome. As you've found gooseberries come in all sorts of colours and the only way to find out what colour you have is to Wait and See! They all start out green anyway

[StephenH]

I've got Langley Gage (Green), Jenny Lind (White), and London (Red), but they're all still green at the moment! What colour they end up when ripe will at least narrow down the possibilities.

[Nes]

All my gooseberries are Invicta - a green variety. However, the plants look pretty different to each other - two simply refuse to be trained into a nice bush shape on a leg as my book says they "should" be, but insist on being very straggly multi stemmed things that flop all over the place (possibly due to being in too much shade). Two more are lovely, if a little congested, bushes on legs, and the last two are trained (badly!) as fans.
The point being, I'm afraid you may never know exactly what you've got, but if the fruit is tasty and the bushes healthy, I guess it doesn't really matter what variety they are (though of course it'd be nice to know anyway!).

[Two_Sheds]

sites ... only tend to show a picture of the actual fruit rather than what the tree/bush itself looks like?

The size & shape of the bush can be entirely different from an identical variety depending on how it's been pruned/trained or how it's been shaped by light/wind/shade

Gooseberries are usually trained into a goblet shape, to allow air into the centre of the plant, but they can also be pruned/trained into tall shapes, standards, diagonals, all sorts. Or just left unpruned

You can't tell the variety by the shape of the plant