Indians and early settlers smoked the inner bark, stem scrapings, and leaves, which have a slightly narcotic effect. Indians also used an extract as an emetic for treating fevers and coughs and obtained dyes from the bark and roots. Flowers self-sterile, requiring cross pollination. Pollinators include the honey bee, bumble bee, solitary bee, and possibly beetles, flies, and butterflies. Seed dispersal primarily by songbirds, although other animals including bears, mice, grouse, quail, partridges, and even ducks may eat the fruit and disperse seeds.
Germination rates increase after passage through a black bear's digestive tract.
The seeds may be stored in seedbanks. Individual plants generally first bear fruit at 3 to 4 years of age, but older plants are more prolific. On good sites forms dense thickets through vegetative reproduction. Spreads by layering when the lower stems touch or lie along the ground and root at the nodes. Plants may also produce new shoots from the roots and new branches from the bases of dying branches.