Most people grow flowering quince for its gorgeous, early spring blooms, and I can’t really blame them. The flowers are show-stoppers, and may be orange, magenta, pale pink, or red. Unfortunately (at least for us foragers), many modern hybrids are bred to be sterile, and don’t produce fruit. Apparently some people find the fruit to be a nuisance. Let’s not call those people wrong…they’re just misinformed. Clearly they have never tasted flowering quince fruit. Read more
There are several species of chokecherry native to North America. Most people consider it a weedy tree, but wildlife of all kinds appreciate the fruit, and in this instance I’m siding with the birds (and the bears and the raccoons). Underripe chokecherries are unpleasantly astringent, but let them ripen to a dark purple color and they sweeten up, making them one of my favorite summer fruits Read more
Maybe it’s the name.
Amelanchier is tricky to pronounce if you’ve never heard it said out loud: am-eh-lan-kee-er. So let’s call it Serviceberry or Saskatoon or Shadblow or Juneberry…this plant has no shortage of common names! Whatever you call it, the fruit is delicious. Slightly larger than a blueberry, it tastes like a mashup of strawberry, blueberry, and just a touch of almond. Read more
I look forward to persimmon season every year. It fills me with joy, greed, and FOMO. Read more
Did you know that black raspberries and blackberries are entirely different fruits? Both are cane fruits, producing berries on thorny, arching stems (called canes). Both are members of the Rubus genus, which also includes raspberries and wineberries (and dewberries and boysenberries and cloudberries, among others). All bramble berries (Rubus species) are aggregate fruits. Each bump on the berry is actually an individual fruit that is part of an aggregate berry. Read more