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| Wild Strawberry |
Wild Strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) are the first to appear. Although they are very small, they are very sweet and delicious. Make sure to check them often and harvest them as soon as they become ripe because rodents are also very fond of them!
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| Saskatoon Berries |
Saskatoon Berry (Amelanchier alnifolia) is one of the iconic berries of the valley. They were very plentiful this year and the bushes were dripping with them. Due to their growth pattern as drupes, the fruits are fairly easy to harvest in large quantities. The berries are great fresh and can also be dried as raisins. Due to our arid climate, it happens that the berries can dry on the shrub itself and remain available there until winter.
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| Mashing Saskatoon Berries and forming them into patties |
The whole berries can also be mashed and then formed into little patties, which dry a lot faster.
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| Saskatoon Berry Cakes |
Once dried, theses patties can be stored for a long time and are extra sweet.
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| Thimbleberry |
It always seems like there's never enough Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) to go around. Although the fruit in and of itself is almost only the outline of what you would expect, the berries are incredibly delicious, soft, and juicy. That also makes them best just eaten straight from the bush.
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| Wild Raspberry |
Although they don't grow in dense clusters where we live, there are a few shoots of Wild Raspberry (Rubus idaeus) growing here and there. Just like their cultivated counterparts, they are of course delicious.
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| Black Hawthorne |
Black Hawthorne (Cratageus columbiana), recognizable by its sharp thorns, has berries that are mealy with big seeds but I like eating them fresh a lot. I don't like drying them though because dealing with the seeds then becomes a little too much and definitely decreases the enjoyment of it. We gathered much hawthorne for medicine this year and you can read about that on Rosalee's blog.
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| Wax Currant |
Wax Currant (Ribes cereum) is very much under-appreciated around here. People find them dry and tasteless but I think of them as fun gummy bears. And, when fully ripe, they do have a good flavor and I always enjoy eating them fresh.
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| Oregon Grape |
Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) produces very tart berries but, if you can take it, they're definitely edible. I don't necessarily enjoy them very much and I find them best in jellies or at least mixed with sweeter fruits. On the picture, it's actually Mahonia nervosa, which grows on the west side of the Cascades and generally has more leaflets than its cousin here.
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| Canada Goldenrod |
Though not a berry, this green plant is available well into the summer months, where it seems to especially like sunny river banks. Canada Goldenrod's (Solidago canadensis) green leaves and flowers can be eaten in salads and make also a wonderful tea.
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| False Solomon's Seal Berries |
The berries of False Solomon's Seal (now Maianthemum racemosum and M. stellatum) turn bright red when they're ripe. Though they have very big seeds, they are as sweet as honey and make a nice treat.
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| Blue Elderberry |
Although some people are sensitive to Blue Elderberry (Sambucus cerulea), its fruits are definitely not as toxic as its cousin the Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) and they can be eaten fresh by most. The toxicity is most probably located in the seeds so you can spit them out or only eat the berries after being cooked if you're concerned. We tend to make wine out of them. They're sweeter after a frost but we can never wait that long!
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| Chokecherries |
We harvested many pounds of Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) this year. Though they are always astringent, the ripe berries have a pleasant taste, which I guess may need to be acquired. There seems to be different kinds of chokecherries. The best ones are the larger red translucent berries. The smaller, darker berries can also be good but they need to be very ripe or you'll wince at their strong astringency. I recommend you sample a couple of berries from a specific bush before you harvest a whole bunch so that you can save yourself from disappointment.
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| Dried Chokecherry |
We ate tons of them fresh and processed the rest. Some we dried like raisins. Make sure you're in a very dry climate if you choose to do that because they take a long time to dry (3 weeks to a month depending on conditions). They lose most of their astringency that way and become quite sweet but you have to nibble at the fruit around the seed, which some people don't like to do though I personally don't mind. You can also choose to pit the cherries and dry them that way, which speeds up the drying time quite a bit.
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| Chokecherries in Mortar |
The traditional way to do it is to crush the berries and the seeds at the same time. The seeds contain some cyanide compound and the strong smell of almond liqueur overwhelms you when you crush them. So don't eat the freshly crushed cakes (made like Saskatoon cakes) or you could get cyanide poisoning. Wait until they're completely dry, which destroys the poisonous compound and makes the cakes safe to eat. Apparently, the seeds contain significant amounts of fat and protein to make it all worth it. The only problem is that the shells are of course crushed in the cake as well and they don't make the experience enjoyable. You pretty much have to spit them out. I have used a mortar and pestle to crush the berries, which leave big chunks of shells. I have also used a meat grinder, which reduces the shells to very small fragments. Either way, I can't get myself to swallow them and I have to spit them out after sucking the fruit out of the cake. But I guess that's the price to pay for extra fat and protein.
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| Chokecherries Crushed in Mortar |
Finally, we made a whole bunch of chokecherry jelly, which turned out really great! Check out Rosalee's blog for the chokecherry jelly recipe.
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| Chokecherry Cake |
Enjoy the spoils of summer!
Visit the other posts of this Edible Plants series:
You need to let your chokecherries get dark in color, not red.
ReplyDeleteNope. We have two sub-varieties here. One that gets dark in color and that is very astringent, and another one that is bright red when ripe, which is less astringent and sweeter.
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