Berries to Butternuts

Sumac bushes with red berry clusters. These look beautiful, but it turns out they weren't ripe yet.

I hoped to find a thicket of plum trees that afternoon. I'd found the trees in flower on a rainy-day hike in the spring, and I wanted to see whether they were now bearing fruit. Although my expedition wasn't successful in the way I'd hoped, it turned out to be successful in ways I would never have imagined.

Red, ripe raspberries. A treat!

Mystery nuts.

My good luck began with a ripe raspberry here and there along the trail. I also spied many green, unripe blackberries and filed the information away for later. I even found three blueberries (I don't think of collecting blueberries until closer to August). When I got to the knoll where I'd seen the putative plum trees, alas, I didn't find any fruit hanging from their branches. I did notice some green nuts scattered about the ground. I couldn't find the tree they'd come from, and I'm not entirely sure what kind of nut they were. My best guess at the moment is some kind of hickory nut (I didn't see any shagbark hickories, whose peeling bark is quite distinctive, and I don't think I'd be able to recognize any other kinds).

Unripe blackberries.

 I turned back down the trail after the plumless knoll and the mystery nuts, and after at time I came to a spot where a variety of berries were growing in the middle of the trail, so that the trail split like a momentarily divided highway. Somehow, I hadn't noticed the berries on my hike in. Some were unripe blackberries, some were ripe red raspberries, and the rest resembled blackberries except that they had a significant white bloom and were fuzzier, like raspberries.

These look moldy, but they aren't! This is the
handful of bloom-covered berries I brought home
for my kids. These have even been rinsed.

I had just seen the same type of berry on a different trail, where the white bloom made me think the first berry I'd seen was moldy. Then I'd noticed that all the black berries (although not the unripe red ones) had this bloom and that the stems were coated in white as well. So it probably wasn't mold. I next wondered whether someone had sprayed a pesticide here (which seemed unlikely, given that I was on conservation land), but when I picked a berry, I found that the inside (which of course would not have been exposed during any chemical spraying) was also coated in fuzzy whiteness. When I now found the same berries on a different trail, I concluded that the white bloom must be a natural feature of the berry. Because all the raspberry- and blackberry-like berries are edible, I tasted one. It was delicious -- significantly sweeter than a blackberry or raspberry. I collected a handful (I only had a small snack cup that hadn't made it back inside from my car) to share with my kids when I got home and decided to take the kids berry picking the next day.

I took my two youngest boys back
to pick black raspberries the next day.
We even found a few ripe blackberries!

Incidentally, I've now decided that these bloom-covered berries are most likely black raspberries. At first I thought they might be dewberries, but the stems were green, not red. When I read a description of the black raspberry plant, I learned that, although stems on older plants are red, those of newer plants are green with a white bloom. The book didn't mention a bloom on the berries, but I'm guessing black raspberries nonetheless. My source mentioned that many people think black raspberries are the tastiest of all the berries in the blackberry-raspberry family, and I am definitely throwing my vote in the same direction.

These nuts were hanging right into the trail.

After several minutes of berry picking, it caught my attention that some branches were practically hitting me in the face (no, I am not the world's most observant person, mainly because I can become completely absorbed in a single activity to the point that I can hear or see nothing outside of that activity). I then noticed some strange fruits hanging from the branches, which were bent significantly over the trail. Actually, the branch was so much of an obstacle that I must have had to duck to get by on my hike in; the top of the tree had been practically severed and was hanging upside down across the path. How I had managed to pass this spot on my way in without noticing the fruits was beyond me. In fact, I began to wonder whether I had somehow taken a wrong turn on the way back, but a short amount of backtracking confirmed that I'd come the right way (I saw a pair of striking orange mushrooms that I was sure I'd seen before). I went back to examine the tree and fruits, which I now decided were nuts (I took one home and cracked it open, and although it clearly wasn't ripe yet, I was able to confirm this identification).

Nuts in hand.

Most plant-identification guides show pictures of flowers and ripe fruit, not unripe fruit, and I didn't recognize this small nut. But, as I looked at the leaves, I saw that they resembled walnut leaves except that the terminal leaflet was well developed. The leaves were a little straggly looking, probably because most of the trunk was severed (it was amazing that the tree was producing fruit at all), but I glanced up at the branches stemming from the intact portion of the trunk and still thought the leaves looked similar to walnut leaves. I looked at the bark, which had interesting, textured grooves. A possibility began to dawn on me. Could this be butternut? I hardly dared to hope as I looked back at the nuts. They were the shape of small footballs. Very small footballs, but footballs nonetheless. They had four lightly discernible ridges running lengthwise. I imagined the nuts getting bigger, darkening a bit ... and looking pretty much exactly like a butternut.

Bark of the nut tree.

I was beginning to believe that I might really have found this nut, which has been evading me for a year now. The first time I found a walnut tree (at our town playground), I thought it was a butternut, even after I'd tasted it. I had not managed to get the nut out of its shell intact, so its walnut shape was lost. Additionally, walnuts apparently need to age to develop their flavor, so a newly picked or fallen nut tastes considerably different -- and worse -- than an older nut. I could not reconcile the taste of this supposed butternut with Samuel Thayer's description in The Forager's Harvest (see my list of recommended reading). He writes: "Butternuts that have had the hulls peeled while green are a delicacy. Their sweet flavor hints at bananas and vanilla ice cream, and they are very soft."

The nut tree had been practically severed
at the top.

When I finally figured out that I'd found a walnut tree rather than a butternut tree, I was sorely disappointed. Afterall, I can buy walnuts in the store, and I'm not even a big walnut fan (as a side note, I have now tried properly aged wild walnuts, and they do taste significantly better than the cultivated kind available for purchase). I have been searching for the butternut tree ever since. So to think that I might finally have found one (nevermind that it had to practically hit me in the face before I noticed it) -- well, I was so excited that I began talking to myself. (Should I admit this? I talk to myself. My mother does it too; I used to think she was crazy, but now that such a belief would require me to admit that I'm crazy, too, I've dropped the charge).

Walnuts high up in the tree.

I pocketed a nut and headed back to my car. On my way home, I stopped by the playground to see how the walnut trees were doing. The nuts were considerably larger than the possible butternuts were. That gave me pause. The two trees are relatives; do their nuts develop at the same time and pace? The playground trees have ample sunlight, whereas the maybe-butternut tree was in the shady woods. Could that make a difference? Well, I'll keep an eye on my tree and let you know how it turns out. I'm still cautiously excited. (Post-publication note: it wasn't a butternut tree; see my next post.)

Sumac flowers.

After hitting the playground, I stopped by my favorite parking lot to check on the sumac and milkweed. The sumac is still in flower and hasn't made berries yet. Most of the sumac I've seen is still in flower, but last week I did find some bushes with bright red berries. The color looked perfect, but when I sucked on a berry (you can't eat them -- they're too hard to chew), it didn't have any flavor. I'm not sure why -- I guess it was just wishful thinking -- but I collected eight berry heads anyway and tried to make some sumac-ade with them. We made many pitchers of this refreshing, tart

Sumac berries.

drink last summer. Unsurprisingly, the flavor wasn't good; my husband described it as kind of like treebark-flavored water. Next time I'll be sure to put more stock in the taste test (I'm not sure why I conducted a taste test if I wasn't going to take its results into account).

Milkweed plant with small, immature pods
(look in the center of the photograph).

Although it will be a while yet before I'm collecting sumac from that parking lot, several of the milkweed plants had small, immature pods, at the perfect stage for collecting. I'd never tried a milkweed pod before, but I have enjoyed milkweed shoots and flower-bud clusters, and so I was looking forward to trying the pods. Interestingly, although there are a lot of milkweed plants around this parking lot, only those plants in one particular place had pods yet. I collected enough for everyone to have a small serving at dinner. Then I picked a bagful of day lilies and headed home to try a recipe for salmon-stuffed day lilies. The flowers, stuffing, and boiled milkweed pods (which tasted like the other milkweed parts except for the soft pre-silk inside, which was creamy and vaguely cheesy) were enjoyed by everyone except my oldest son, who didn't like much of anything that day and whose opinions should therefore be discounted.

Black locust leaves?

A few other recent adventures are worth sharing. Back in May I found some trees with deeply furrowed bark -- so unusually furrowed that I wanted to know what kind of trees they were (see my May 23 post). I passed the same trees on my way to the black raspberries, and now that the leaves are out, I'm thinking these might be black locusts. Black locust trees are considered invasive in Massachusetts, so it should be easy to find one -- except that it hasn't been. I've been looking for them because their flowers are supposed to be beautiful, delightfully scented, and delicious (one book recommends black-locust fritters). Although black locusts might ordinarily blossom in early July, all the rain and warm weather has accelerated things this year, so I'm guessing the flowers have come and gone. I'll keep an eye on these trees next year to see whether my identification is correct.

Unripe serviceberries?

Another tentative identification this week was what I'm hoping turns out to be a serviceberry bush (also known as shadbush or juneberry). The fruits reportedly have a delicious pear-like flavor. They resemble blueberries or miniature apples and, like those two fruits, have a crown on the bottom. The ripe berries range from reddish purple to blue, purple, and black. I saw the berries and took a picture, then made this tentative identification at home, so I'll have to go back to the bush with my plant guides to be sure.

Unripe riverside grapes.

One final discovery I'll mention from the past week are riverside grapes. A friend used to have trees covered in grape vines, and she always lamented how the animals seemed to take all the grapes before the people could get any. So I'm only tentatively excited to see the developing grapes, but I do hope some will still be around for picking in the fall. I've noticed a number of grape vines in various places during my explorations.

So, no plum trees, but plenty of other exciting discoveries this week!

Photo Gallery

Here are some more pictures from the week.

I think this is false Solomon's seal, but I didn't dig up the root to find out. The roots are edible, but they don't sound very tasty. The best thing Samuel Thayer has to say about them is that "Solomon's seal rhizomes would at least be a good source of calories for someone lost in the woods." The shoots, on the other hand, reportedly make a good vegetable. The berries, which turn bright red when they ripen in the fall, are sweet like molasses but have a strong acrid aftertaste. Thayer says the berries are edible, but I should note that another author, Teresa Marrone in Wild Berries & Fruits, says they are inedible. I tend to thoroughly trust Thayer, however. The level of detail and personal verification of facts in his books is convincing.

Milkweed pods boiling for dinner.

The underside of riverside grape leaves is considerably lighter than the top. The young leaves (when shiny and a bit reddish) make a good wrap for rice stuffing, and a friend of mine recently sauteed the leaves to reportedly delicious effect.

The terminal leaflet in this walnut leaf is missing; a butternut leaf would have a well-developed terminal leaflet.

Close-up picture of two walnuts from one of the many walnut trees surrounding our local playground.

Indian cucumber with unripe, green berries. There are two berries, so this plant is two years old. The berries are inedible, but they turn blue when they are ripe. (The root is edible and tasty; see my February 21 and May 31 posts for more about Indian cucumbers.)

The deeply furrowed bark of what I hope is a black locust tree.

Weeds: They're Tasty, Attractive, and Everywhere!

A basswood tree growing at the edge of a playground parking lot. Basswood in bloom is easily recognizable by the tongue-like bracts that are attached to the flowers and buds.

My eldest son displays a basswood flower
connected to its leafy bract.

Although I love to go foraging -- intentionally take my backpack, tools, and some plastic baggies and go looking for food -- much more often I find plants I can eat when I'm not even looking for them. Just this morning I took my kids to a playground I've only been to once before. As we were getting out of the car, I spotted two large walnut trees at the edge of the small parking lot. Then I noticed another large tree, this one with the most interesting, sweet-smelling flower clusters. The flowers were at the end of a long stem that was connected midway up a long, narrow, tongue-like bract that was a much lighter shade of green than the other leaves. Immediately, I recognized this tree from one of my foraging books. I knew which book it was in, but I couldn't remember the name of the tree or which parts one could eat. Still, those flowers and bracts were unmistakable.

I took some pictures, and my eldest son picked a sample to take home, where we identified the tree as a basswood. The leaf buds, young leaves, and tiny nuts are edible. The cambium, which lies underneath the bark, is also supposed to be tasty, but you'd have to kill the tree to get it, so it isn't an advisable snack unless you need to fell the tree anyway. Some people enjoy tea made from basswood flowers, although my source (Samuel Thayer) finds basswood tea overrated. He does highly recommends the young leaves as salad greens. It's past time for me to try any parts except the tiny nuts this year, but now we have an excuse to visit this playground again in the spring.

Burdock growing beneath some walnut trees at a local playground.

Playgrounds seem to make good foraging spots. On a recent trip to a different local playground, we found so many edible plants that it would be difficult to list them all. There were walnut trees growing over a lush border of burdock and pokeweed and, farther along, blackberry bushes and cattails. The latter had crept under a chain-link fence separating the ball field from a marsh. I showed my middle son how to pull up cattail leaf hearts, and we collected some for dinner (this was my second attempt at cooking the leaf hearts; they were delicious boiled and then served with a little butter and salt). As we tried to pull up one heart, the entire plant, roots and all, came out, and I was excited to find a lateral stem attached! My middle son was the only one of us who had yet had the opportunity to try a lateral, reportedly the best part of the cattail plant (see my February 2 post for details). I can now report that the lateral tastes just like the leaf hearts, except that it's not at all fibrous.

Lady's thumb in flower.

Cattail latteral stem.

After finding the cattails, we made our way around to the other side of the ball field, where there was a little building. Outside the building was some flowering lady's thumb (the peppery greens make a nice addition to salads and are tasty sauteed as well).

Wild food isn't just at playgrounds, though. In previous posts I've established the supermarket-like quality of certain parking lots. Now, let's add rest stops to the list. It was there that I collected some burdock flower stalks on the way back from a recent trip to New Jersey. Burdock is a biennial, which means it flowers every other year. All along the treeline at this rest stop were burdock plants, and many of them had sent up tall flower stalks. Most had not yet made flowers, though (once the flowers appear, the stalk is too tough to eat). I remembered that the flower stalks were supposed to be the best part of burdock (I had never tried any part of burdock before). I cut off several stalks and took them home, where I boiled them until they were tender. They were quite tasty, sort of like potatoes.

Milkweed growing near the school where my sons played spring
soccer. Unfortunately, most of the plants were infested with
some sort of black goop; I'm really not sure what it was.
I'm hoping the pods will be unaffected.

The beauty of being a forager is that I seem to find plants I can eat wherever I go: wood sorrel in the garden of our bed & breakfast, curly dock on the side of the road near my son's school, milkweed at a soccer game, sumac shoots at the edges of parking lots, thistle, wintergreen, and a variety of different berries at a cousin-in-law's house. I don't have to go foraging to go foraging, and that's just what I love about learning to recognize wild plants. Weeds are no longer weeds.

Not only can weeds be delicious; they can also be attractive. I was particularly inspired while visiting a local children's museum because, while walking along a pretty garden path, I noticed that all the beautiful flowers in the garden were so-called "weeds." I don't know the names of many of the flowers, but I recognized them as native plants that grow around my house in places we don't necessarily want them growing. Or at least in places we think we don't want them growing. Perhaps we should take a different approach and cultivate them. The museum garden and path were quite lovely.

My eldest son displays
a milkweed flower.

In fact, many edible plants make pretty flowers. I love lady's thumb, for example, and sheep sorrel makes striking, if tiny, red flower spikes. Wood sorrel's yellow flowers and heart-shaped leaves are cute, and chickweed's white flowers would look nice along a border. Even milkweed, which I found growing alongside "proper" garden plants in front of my son's elementary school and near the the boys' soccer field (see picture above), produces an attractive flower (see photo at left). I suspect that the plants got in without the landscaper's permission, but I think milkweed could be an attractive part of a planned garden as well.

Ox-eye daisies.

I also recently learned that the young leaves of ox-eye daisies are edible. The daisies are all in flower here already this year, but I've been noting good future collecting grounds, which so far include the field near our train station, the field by our favorite picnic rock, and the conservation land behind a local church.

Open day lily and some
unopened buds. Delicious!

Some flowers that people already plant in their gardens make excellent table fare. Yesterday afternoon the boys and I picked some day-lily buds from around our house and sauteed them in a little butter. We had never tried day lilies before, but they were so tasty that I decided to use them in a stir-fry for dinner tonight! The results were worth sharing; see the end of this post for my recipe. The taste of day lilies is similar to asparagus and green beans but is definitely its own flavor.

The day lilies on our property are being taken over by invasive vines, so in the process of collecting dinner, my oldest son and I ended up getting out the clippers and preventing at least some of the flowers (and a couple of birch trees) from getting dragged to the ground under the weight of the vines. It turns out that clipping invasive vines is addicting! I know it sounds crazy, but we didn't want to stop. We only came reluctantly inside because the rest of the family wanted dinner, but we have plans to continue the work in the morning.

Sauteed day lily flower buds.

I learned about eating day lilies from a great little book called The Edible Flower Garden by Rosalind Creasy. Unfortunately, I don't have enough sun at my house to plant many of the flowers she showcases, but I have planted some, including violets, violas, borage, pinks, and Johnny jump-ups. If you're interested in the prospect of being able to admire your garden and eat it, too, I highly recommend her book (which you can find in the list of recommended products on the right-hand side of this blog).

My youngest son with
a mallow pea we collected
from my garden.

Mallow makes a pretty purple flower, although it might be too inconspicuous for attractive garden plantings. I did plant some mallow in my vegetable garden, though, and the little spiral "peas" have started coming out. I've been freezing them by the handful as they ripen. They have thickening properties, similar to those of okra, so I'm planning to use them in a soup once I've collected enough (I only have two plants in my garden).

Mallow with flowers and fruits at our train station.

My middle son and I also recently collected some mallow peas from our favorite train station. Someone clears the brush away around the edges of the parking lot from time to time, so there weren't as many plants as we were hoping for because the trimming had just been done. We were able to collect a fair amount of peas, though, as well as some mint leaves for iced tea.

My most exciting recent discovery was in New Jersey, where we met my dad at a campground for a couple of days. I kept seeing these plants that I thought might be mayapple, but I hadn't gotten my book out to compare the live specimens to the photos. I have seen mayapple only once, on a foraging walk with Russ Cohen. We were on a community farm, and Russ mentioned, much to my disappointment, that mayapple does not grow natively in Massachusetts. I'd read that it grows in southern Quebec and in states south of Massachusetts, so I figured it grew here, too, and I'd been searching for it, apparently in vain.

Mayapple leaves.

Mayapple usually consists of a single stalk with an umbrella-like leaf. In flowering years, the stem forks and produces two leaves, and after the lone white flower appears, a lemon-shaped yellowgreen fruit (which turns yellow or yellowish brown as it ripens) begins growing underneath the leaf. Mayapples are apparently a bit fickle about producing fruit. If they don't have enough sunlight, or there hasn't been enough rain, or they're in the wrong mood, they just hang out as leaves. Even when mayapple plants do make fruit, raccoons and other animals are likely to get it before people do. The unripe fruits are toxic (as is the rest of the plant), but the ripe fruit is apparently so delicious that it's worth long hours of searching just to find one the raccoons missed.

To give you an idea of why I'm so excited to try a mayapple, I invite you to read the words of Samuel Thayer in Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants. Thayer has just described the lengths to which he has gone to hunt down a mayapple. Then he writes,

Mayapple plants.

"I have never examined the input/output ratio of calories for this pursuit, nor have I calculated my labor efficiency. But please don't do it for me. Let us mayapple hunters have our fun. Who cares how many hours are consumed; we are driven by our memory of that one time, when there was a fruit on every forked stem, some as big as kiwi fruits -- and we got hundreds. You don't understand; you weren't there. Maybe someday we'll find that again. And if not, sixteen will keep the memory alive."

Mayapple plants with fruit hanging under nearly every one!

 So I'd been seeing all these possible mayapple plants in New Jersey, but I hadn't seen any fruits, and I hadn't checked Thayer's book yet to see whether I'd found the real thing. Then, as my middle son and I were hiking along a trail in the state park where we were camping, we came upon something that made consulting a book completely unnecessary. There, on either side of the trail, were mayapple plants, and mayapple plants, and more mayapple plants, and almost every single one had a lemon-shaped fruit dangling underneath its leaves. I was beyond excited, and it hardly mattered that the fruits were unripe and still toxic. (My son got so excited that he was campaigning to drive back to New Jersey when we thought the mayapples would be ripe, but of course I don't intend to drive four and a half hours to find out the animals beat us to the prize).

Unripe mayapple fruit.

I might not have been able to taste a mayapple, but I could and did dig up a few plants to take home. I chose them from shady spots where the tree canopy had grown so tall and shady that the plants were just hanging on, not making flowers or fruits. I chose them from the middle of the trail where they were only going to get trampled. And I brought them safely home to my own garden, where fortunately a few are doing well in their new soil and, with luck, will someday allow me to taste a fruit (a few, unfortunately, have withered in their new home). Of course, I fully expect to have to fight the local wildlife for them (the chipmunks ate every single strawberry from my garden this year).

Even if I don't get to eat all the fruit from my future mayapple colony, though, at least the attractive flowers will make a fine addition to my garden!

Photo Gallery

Here are some more pictures from our adventures over the last few weeks. And check out the recipe for day-lily stir fry at the end.

Unripe fruit hanging beneath a mayapple leaf.

Curly dock (center) and ox-eye daisy in the field near our train station.

Curly dock near my son's elementary school. It's easiest to spot curly dock when it's in flower, which isn't the time at which you want to eat it.

A selection of edible plants growing near my town's train station. Pokeweed is at the top left, mallow is at center right, and mint is at the far right. I'm no longer sure whether the plant at bottom center is anything interesting. I gathered a bunch of mint to make iced tea the day I took this picture.

My youngest two sons play in the sandbox at the playground where we found the cattails. My middle son is building a volcano.

My youngest son.

We found a great climbing tree at the playground!

Here are the cattails that have crept under the fence. We made some friends after we collected these. A little boy saw us carrying the cattails across the field and ran over to ask what they were. I told him they were cattails and that we were going to eat them, and he ran off to tell his mother, who was apparently interested in the idea of eating cattails and other wild plants.

There were also some walnut trees.

Here's a closer view of the walnut leaves. Walnut trees can be distinguished from butternut trees because the terminal leaf in each leaflet is not well developed on a walnut tree. I keep examining walnut-like leaves in the hopes of finding a butternut tree, but so far no luck.

There was also a lot of pokeweed at this playground (this is way too big to eat now).

Pokeweed. Too big to eat. The pokeweed across the street from my house is about to make berries, so I'll post pictures of that soon.

A burdock leaf. I neglected to take pictures of the flower stalks I collected and ate.

Last year's dried burdock burrs.

 

Here's a close-up of a mallow pea.

This snail was hanging out in the field at the train station, and he seemed photo worthy.

 

 

 Sweet-and-Sour Day-Lily Stir Fry

Sauce:
6 T red wine vinegar
6 T orange juice
6 T sugar
3 T ketchup
1 t cornstarch
 1/2 t salt

Stir-fry:
1 lb chicken, flank steak, pork tenderloin, or tofu, cut into small, even pieces (I used chicken)
2 t soy sauce
2 T vegetable of peanut oil
1 1/2 lb vegetables, including as many day-lily buds and flower petals (remove stamens and sepals from open flowers) as you can collect; supplement with other vegetables, such as bamboo shoots, baby corn, or mushrooms
1 14 oz can pineapple chunks
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 T minced fresh ginger
cashews, for sprinkling
serve with rice

1. Cook rice. While rice is cooking, toss meat or tofu in soy sauce. Heat 2 t oil in nonstick skillet or wok and heat over high heat until just smoking. Stir fry meat or tofu, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Transfer to a clean bowl (prepare sauce while meat or tofu is cooking).

2. Add 1 T oil to the pan and return to high heat until shimmering. Add vegetables and pineapple and stir fry until crisp-tender, only a couple of minutes for day lilies (add vegetables at different times if some will take longer to cook than others).

3. Clear the center of the pan, add 1 t oil, garlic, and ginger, and cook until fragrant, about 30 to 60 seconds. Whisk sauce to recombine, add to pan, and bring to a simmer. Cook a few minutes or until thick. Serve immediately over rice and sprinkle cashews on top.