Berry Madness

[rachelmanija]

When my last Native Foods Nursery order arrives and is planted, I will have nine types of berries growing on my land: strawberries, blackberries (wild), raspberries (wild and cultivated), blueberries, golden currants, salmonberries, thimbleberries, salal berries, and honeyberries/haskaps.

I have never tried the latter five - please comment if you have! - and in fact only learned about them on the website. But since I've only ever encountered one berry I really dislike, I have high hopes. Except for the salal berries, which are mostly for the birds.)

Poll #26912

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 105

View Respondents

I have eaten these berries FRESH (pies, sauce, jam, & dried doesn't count unless stated otherwise. You may mention that in comments though.)

View Answers

Strawberries
105 (100.0%)

Blueberries
103 (98.1%)

Raspberries
103 (98.1%)

Blackberries
101 (96.2%)

Mulberries
51 (48.6%)

Lingonberries
22 (21.0%)

Cranberries
58 (55.2%)

Boysenberries
31 (29.5%)

Cloudberries
16 (15.2%)

Currants (state color in comments)
50 (47.6%)

Serviceberries
12 (11.4%)

Honeyberries/Haskaps
7 (6.7%)

Salal berries
4 (3.8%)

Gooseberries (non-fresh counts)
51 (48.6%)

Elderberries (non-fresh counts)
34 (32.4%)

Huckleberries
25 (23.8%)

Thimbleberries
9 (8.6%)

Salmonberries
17 (16.2%)

Marionberries/ollalieberries/similar crosses
23 (21.9%)

Maypop
0 (0.0%)

Jambutica
2 (1.9%)

Other berry I will mention in comments
12 (11.4%)

Acai (okay I GUESS bowls count)
13 (12.4%)

My favorite berries are...

View Answers

Strawberries
52 (53.6%)

Blueberries
42 (43.3%)

Raspberries
62 (63.9%)

Blackberries
39 (40.2%)

Mulberries
10 (10.3%)

Lingonberries
7 (7.2%)

Cranberries
16 (16.5%)

Boysenberries
4 (4.1%)

Cloudberries
4 (4.1%)

Red currants
16 (16.5%)

White currants
1 (1.0%)

Golden currants
2 (2.1%)

Black currants
16 (16.5%)

Serviceberries
1 (1.0%)

Honeyberries/Haskaps
1 (1.0%)

Salal berries
0 (0.0%)

Gooseberries
9 (9.3%)

Huckleberries
6 (6.2%)

Thimbleberries
1 (1.0%)

Salmonberries
3 (3.1%)

Marionberries
10 (10.3%)

Ollallieberries
1 (1.0%)

Maypop
0 (0.0%)

Jambutica
0 (0.0%)

Other berry I will state in comments
2 (2.1%)

Acai (okay I GUESS bowls count)
0 (0.0%)

I HATE this berry!

View Answers

Strawberries
3 (6.5%)

Blueberries
3 (6.5%)

Raspberries
3 (6.5%)

Blackberries
4 (8.7%)

Mulberries
2 (4.3%)

Lingonberries
1 (2.2%)

Cranberries
3 (6.5%)

Acai (the berry)
3 (6.5%)

Acai (the trend)
25 (54.3%)

Boysenberries
0 (0.0%)

Cloudberries
0 (0.0%)

Red currants
4 (8.7%)

White currants
2 (4.3%)

Black currants
4 (8.7%)

Golden currants
3 (6.5%)

Serviceberries
0 (0.0%)

Honeyberries/Haskaps
0 (0.0%)

Salal berries
1 (2.2%)

Gooseberries
3 (6.5%)

Huckleberries
0 (0.0%)

Thimbleberries
0 (0.0%)

Salmonberries
0 (0.0%)

Marionberries
0 (0.0%)

Ollalieberries
0 (0.0%)

Maypop
0 (0.0%)

Jambutica
0 (0.0%)

Other berry I will state in comments
3 (6.5%)

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I have had boysen, Marion, and ollallieberries in pies, and I've had cranberry jelly and red currant jelly (tasted exactly like cranberry jelly). Not a huge fan of any of them, to be honest.

[princessofgeeks]

Black raspberries and black currants are AWESOME

Fresh wild blackberries off the vines at Granny's lake cabin in the 1970s... also awesome.

[rachelmanija]

My own fresh blackberries are GREAT. Much better than my parents'. Theirs are too seedy.

Native Foods has black raspberries...

[taelle]

I have eaten all colors of the currant! They're very popular on garden plots in Russia. There's a joke/riddle about currants: "Is this one black? No, red! Then why is it white? Because it's green [in Russian green also means unripe]" I'm not that fond of them, though, they're a bit too acid for me (black currant less so than others.

I am also more fond of the smaller black kind of gooseberry than the large green one, it's less acid.

Oh, I also have eaten chokeberry, though I'm almost the only one among the people I know to have a liking for it.

I may have eaten more than I voted for, but I got tired of googling/checking the meaning. And my favoritest berry ever is serviceberry (I learned how it's called in English right now, it's irga in Russian). The only trouble with this one is that birds love it too, so you have to catch the time when it's ripe but the birds haven't eaten it yet.

[rachelmanija]

What is irga like? I've never had it and I can't plant it - it reacts badly with a type of tree I already have a lot of (incense cedars.)

[taelle]

It's... tart-ish? Something between tart and sweet.

[isis]

I've heard a similar American joke about blackberries: when they're red, they're green, and when they're black, they're ready.

[yuuago]

Those berries you ordered look great! Hope they'll grow well for you.

For "other I will mention in the comments": saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia)! Delicious! They taste kind of like blueberries, but have a stronger flavour, and more seeds. Like blueberries but with crunch. :D Not often available as fruit, but lots of people grow the bushes in their yards up here, since they're local and handle the climate well.

[rachelmanija]

The haskaps are not native to my area, but the climate is similar enough that I'm crossing my fingers. Salmonberry, ditto. I have very good feelings about the thimbleberry and salals.

Saskatoons sound delicious! Gee, I wonder where they're from. ;)

[loligo]

Saskatoons are a type of serviceberry -- both are Amelanchier species.

[copperfyre]

Yes! I love saskatoons! They can be a bit hit and miss flavour wise, but when they have a strong flavour they’re great.

[pameladean]

I don't hate the taste of blackberries, but the seeds are awful. I really really don't like acai; to me it tastes like dishwater and I don't like anything about the texture, either.

My mother-in-law used to grow black currants. She had three little bushes, and they obviously had gateways into some other dimension where blackcurrant bushes are about the size of a redwood, because the harvests they produced were terrifying. Fresh black currants are a little overwhelming, but if you are picking them it's hard not to try one once in a while. We would get the call once or twice a year and come down and help her pick all the extant currants, taking more home than we had consented to and making them into jam.

P.

[rachelmanija]

I love the idea of the giant black currant dimension.

I have never tried acai but I feel oddly gratified to hear that it's gross.

[pameladean]

The giant black currant dimension was the only plausible theory I could come up with about HOW MANY blackcurrents there were.

I think I like some things that you find gross, so who knows, you might like acai. Fortunately there are lots of other awesome berries that have not trended in that annoying fashion.

P.

[carbonel]

I really like blackberries -- seeds and all -- even though I generally end up having to floss after I eat them.

[ratcreature]

I've eaten both red and black currants raw. I only tried cranberry raw once because I was curious, but don't care to repeat it. And I actually didn't know anyone ate lingonberry raw, I've only ever seen that as a preserve.

I like the small wild blueberries that are blue throughout more than the big cultivated blueberries that are not blue inside, but the former are really expensive and supermarkets rarely have them. I'm not sure whether they actually go by a different name in English, they might be what's called "bilberry"? Both are called Blaubeeren in my area of Germany. I think the cultivated ones are from an American species, the completely blue ones European. The tiny wild European strawberries are really good too, but also not easy to buy.

[rachelmanija]

I don't think anyone does eat raw lingonberries! I just forgot to specify that prepared counts with them.

I know what you mean with blueberries. The all-blue ones are much better.

[ratcreature]

Sea buckthorn is another one that is great in preserves, but nobody eats raw, I don't think.

My brother has a blueberry bush in his garden (the all blue kind), but never manages to defend it sufficiently against birds and squirrels to reap any significant benefits, certainly not enough berries to share some with me. They all get eaten as soon as they start to ripen. He tried a bird net once, but birds still ate the berries, only a squirrel gruesomely strangled itself, so he gave up on that. :/

Same with the serviceberry in his garden (I just now learned this word as I looked up all the unfamiliar English berry names to see whether they matched with familiar fruit, it's called Felsenbirne, literally "rock pear" in German). I'm actually not sure he even tries with that one. I thought it was just ornamental and meant for birds, because he doesn't complain about loosing those like about the blueberries, and it's not a fruit in stores. But Wikipedia says they are good, so I guess we are missing out. The birds are certainly very into them.

[azdak]

The Estonians make an absolutely delicious non-sweet fizzy drink with sea buckthorn. If I were at all entrepreneurial, I would export it and make a fortune selling it to trendy bars and restaurants.

[rachelmanija]

Now I really want this.

[ratcreature]

Sea buckthorn juice is fairly common in Germany as well. It is believed to have all sort of health benefits, so all the organic food stores sell it at high prices, like 7€ a bottle or such. It's also used in cocktails, though not being a cocktail person I'm not sure whether that is with the juice or some kind of liquor made from the berries.

[rachelmanija]

Nooooo. Well, I will be very careful when I put up bird netting.

[ratcreature]

Fingers crossed that you'll have more success securing your berries. Or at least retain a share. Without unintended casualties.

[luzula]

I totally eat raw lingonberries! I like them.

[sholio]

You can eat lingonberries raw! (They grow all over around here; locally they're called lowbush cranberry.) I don't usually eat them by themselves, because they're fairly sour/bitter, but they're pretty nice on cereal.

[carbonel]

Costco sells frozen wild blueberries. They're smaller than the usual ones, and might be the kind you're talking about. Very tasty, in any case.

[ratcreature]

Could be. Here I sometimes see canned "forest blueberries" with fruits advertised as from Canada that seem to be the same berry, at least as far as you can tell from preserved ones. Do maybe they also freeze them in North America. They are smaller and dark blue throughout, including the flesh, rather than that being light as with the larger cultivated American blueberry, which aside from the often more intense taste is really the main difference. If you eat them fresh in milk or cream they stain that very violet if you squish them.

When I was little they used to be easier to buy fresh, at least my mom just got them from the grocery store, not some farmer's market or anything. But then Chernobyl happened and they were all contaminated for a while or something, and I think just like wild mushrooms it never fully recovered. I don't remember having them regularly anymore as an older teenager. (That may also be why the glasses with the canned ones put "Canada" so visible on their label, so that people don't worry they might get stuff from radioactive forests just because they are called "forest" blueberry to set them apart.)

[ermingarden]

I love eating fresh elderberries, right off the tree – they commonly grow wild where I grew up. I remember being on a walk with a friend who freaked out when I pulled some berries off a tree we passed and started eating them: She was like, "Don't eat berries off random plants!" And I was like "...but it's not random? I know what it is?"

Picking wild blackberries is so fun, and the excitement makes them taste so good – even though they aren't otherwise one of my favorites.

[rachelmanija]

Hahaha! What do fresh elderberries taste like?

My blackberry bushes have truly vicious thorns. Picking them is an extreme sport.

[ermingarden]

They don't have a super strong flavor – delicate, and not too sweet. I like it, but I know some people who don't. I'd say they're good but not incredible.

...and as I just found out from what ratcreature said, they're apparently mildly poisonous! Well, that explains why I've never seen them at the grocery store, lol.

[ratcreature]

Elderberries grow everywhere around here too, but as a kid I was always told not to eat them raw? My mom said you would get sick from them if you ate them directly, though we had them often cooked as a soup with dumplings in them. Also as a syrup and such. So you can eat them directly? Is this a matter of the amount you eat?

[ermingarden]

Okay, I just looked this up and...apparently they're poisonous when uncooked?! But only if you eat a lot of them.

So uh...don't eat a lot of them, I guess? I've never eaten more than a few at a time, and I've never experienced any ill effects.

[ratcreature]

I guess if it's a dosage thing it makes sense that I was warned as a child. Presumably it going to be worse when you are still tiny.

[zeborah]

From my research (having discovered that the berry-filled tree in my backyard is an elder) the berries themselves aren't poisonous, though the stalks are mildly so, but they apparently cause stomach upsets for some people, which cooking ameliorates.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stomach upsets comes from picking them when they're not quite ripe. You need to wait until they're really really black.

Anyway so I've been fine eating them raw, eg sprinkled on breakfast serial, but I mostly have a tub of them in my freezer and dig out a cupful from time to time to bake in muffins or with apple or peach in a crumble.

[sholio]

I was always told they were mildly poisonous when I was a kid, too! Although what I was told was that the seeds were poisonous, but since you can't easily remove the seeds when eating them fresh, then it's better to treat the whole berry as poisonous. (Hence why e.g. wine and jelly are fine, because they're made from juice after straining out the pulp.)

[ratcreature]

Hmm, the soup my mother made was strained through a sieve too before being thickened, iirc, though it was never mentioned as a safety measure.

Googling recipes I found that in Austria they apparently deep fry the flowers.

[adrian_turtle]

I've had black currants, and currants that I don't know if they were white or golden. They were ok, but nothing special. I hesitate to name "my favorite berry" by species when a really good strawberry is better than a really good blueberry, but most strawberries are not that good even for the 12 hours before they start to go bad.

I had fresh boysenberries many years ago. I remember them being mostly seed, but tasty for what you get. Marionberries were quite nice. Mulberries were boring.

I've eaten fresh raw cranberries though most of them are too tart for that to be really rewarding. I like them raw or minimally cooked, chopped with apple or orange as a relish for meat or a stuffing for squash or topping for ice cream or oatmeal.

[rachelmanija]

Yes, there's a huge amount of variance in how good a strawberry can be,

[zeborah]

Strawberries are best when picked on a sunny afternoon. If it's been raining, leave them alone (unless it's just going to keep raining I guess but they will taste like water).

[shadaras]

I am very fond of huckleberries for the memories of picking them off wild bushes while on a camping trip. Not my favorite berry, but one of the ones with the best specific memories associated with them.

[rachelmanija]

There's something really special about foraging food in the wild.

[copperfyre]

One of my favourite berry related memories is just sitting down in a patch of blueberries after slogging through a fen for ages and stuffing myself with them. They were all warm from the sun and I felt like I’d tapped into the joy of being a bear. I have now been ruined for shop-bought blueberries though, because self-picked ones are so much tastier.

I’ve also had cloudberries a few times which are exciting because you need to be slogging through a bog or fen to find them, and they somehow really do taste like apple pie?

Thimbleberries and salmonberries are sometimes really tasty but sometimes just very watery, I find. I guess it’s something to do with how the plant is growing?

[rachelmanija]

Your blueberry experience sounds marvelous. I'm also jealous of your cloudberry experience - I've never had them.

Hmm. I guess I'll find out how my berries taste! My wild blackberries are really good.

[redbird]

Other: black raspberries.

Currants: red.

We had neighbors who grew gooseberries and raspberries, among other things. When they moved away, they sold the house to people who were unfamiliar with both those fruits. The new owners invited us to pick berries from their shrubs. I don't really like gooseberries, but picked some and gave them to my mother.

[radiantfracture]

I've had some very good salalberry jam.

Red huckleberries or blue huckleberries?

[rachelmanija]

I didn't know red huckleberries existed!

What was the salalberry jam like?

[radiantfracture]

For me, red huckleberries are the only ones -- translucent, small, tart-sweet.

The salalberry jam was complex and somewhat bitter, as you might imagine -- a little bit blackcurranty? -- you wouldn't spread it on your toast -- but it worked brilliantly in thumbprint shortbread.

[loligo]

Technically I have had a honey berry. Exactly one. From the two bushes that have been growing in my front garden for four years now. ONE BERRY.

Deer are the problem. The first couple years the little twigs I planted weren't big enough to fruit anyway. After the deer ate them down to the ground a couple times that first year, I realized I had to protect them, so I encircled them with mesh fencing and things seemed okay for a few years. Last spring they bloomed and set fruit, and I had maybe 10-20 berries ripening on them.

But my mesh fences didn't have a roof. And just before the berries were ready, some deer came in the night and stuck their snoots right in there and ate all the new growth. They missed one berry.

[rachelmanija]

LOLOLOL NOOOOO. Leaving one berry takes it from tragic to just plain insulting.

I don't seem to have deer in my area. Very odd. It seems like prime deer territory. Maybe the housing is just a little bit too dense.

[james]

As a kid I had a huckleberry bush growing right outside my window and I would pop off the screen and grab some for a snack.

[rachelmanija]

That is so idyllic.

[isis]

Thimbleberries grow lushly wild in my local mountains. They're similar to raspberries but less flavorful and kind of oddly soft. It's like, raspberry drupes explode in your mouth, thimbleberry drupes just sort of squish.

We also have wild strawberries, which are the best and alas have ruined me for commercial strawberries; wild raspberries; and wild huckleberries, which alas seem to rarely flower and fruit nowadays.

[rachelmanija]

Oh dear. That does not sound appealing. Well, if I hate them, the birds can have them.

[rachelmanija]

The seem controversial.

“I love the flavor of thimbleberry,” says Bencie. “I describe it as eating red velvet."

OK, it’s niche. But this weekend Keweenaw County is celebrating its 8th Annual Thimbleberry Festival, complete with thimbleberry sundaes.

“A festival?!” cries Tharon O’Dell, a forester with Green Diamond Resources’ California Timber Division, over the phone. “You’d be hard-pressed to get a festival going here for thimbleberries. And it’d be a pretty weird group of people if you did. Have you tried them? They taste like a caterpillar. They’re hairy.”

[isis]

"Eating red velvet" actually captures the weird soft mouthfeel experience pretty well!

I definitely eat them when I encounter them hiking, if they're ripe. But it's not my favorite berry by a long shot.

[zana16]

I like salmon berries and thimble berries, in part because of memories of eating them on hikes. Salal berries aren’t very tasty; not bad but a bit like an interior blueberry. I remember once putting some into a mixed wild berry pie, more for volume and bragging rights about how many kinds of berries were in it than anything else.

[sabotabby]

I really need to learn more about local berries because we have tons and I can't tell any of them apart.

Technically, the best berries are coffee.

I thought you meant ackee, which I know is a fruit and which I quite like, but that is a thing distinct for acai.

The only berries, to my knowledge, that I cannot abide are bananas.

[rachelmanija]

Now you have me wondering if would choose coffee if I could only have one berry.

I don't count "technically a berry" but bananas are revolting.

[sabotabby]

The loss of any other berry from my life would make me terribly sad, but I can't actually exist as a sentient organism without coffee, so it trumps all others.

I blame the United Fruit Company for fucking up bananas. The existence of plantain makes me speculate that there probably were species of bananas that I might have liked. So I have a political reason as opposed to their mushy mealy taste in my mouth for opposing them. Worst berry, -100/10.

[luzula]

According to my grandmother, black currants smell like crushed bedbugs. I'm glad that is not a reference I have.

Other berries I have eaten fresh (I am in Sweden): wild strawberries (yum!!), crowberries (insipid), rowan berries (disgusting and nauseating), bilberries (delicious!), Vaccinium uliginosum (insipid), Rubus arcticus (delicious!), Rubus caesius (delicious!), Rubus saxatilis (insipid), elderberries (best made into drinks), blackthorn (very astringent), hawthorn (not that good). Probably more I don't remember.

[rachelmanija]

Hahaha! I will think of the crushed bedbug scent forever.

I envy your berry adventures.

[sholio]

According to my grandmother, black currants smell like crushed bedbugs.

I think there's more than one kind! (I'm in Alaska.) The ones that grow wild here are locally called skunk currants and they're horrible; it's more of an aftertaste than a taste, but it's a skunky taste/smell that I would compare to trying to eat a stinkbug. But I know that black currants are grown commercially, so they can't ALL be like that. There might be some kind of Arctic-growing variant that's a bit different from the domestic kind.

[ratcreature]

I've only had commercial black currants, and not that often because they are more expensive than red raw, though the default for jams. But they are in all the frozen berry mixes here, and they taste better than the red on their own, imo. They are delicious and I have never met anybody who disliked their taste. I have no idea where that bedbug association would come from.

I have a fruit jam made from black currants open for breakfast right now, and it's sugar reduced from 70% fruit, so plenty of fruit to taste, and there is no trace of skunk (not that I precisely know what that smells like, since they aren't around here, but I imagine an unpleasant funk).

I don't know what black berry gets lumped together as black currants in your area, but according to Wikipedia the berry I know under that name is native only in Eurasia, not North America, and apparently commercially it used to be banned for a plant disease it spread or something in the US, so I suspect that your wild black berry just looks similar and got called the same name. There is an "American black currant" that according to Wikipedia is also edible, but I never had that, so I couldn't vouch for it not being skunky. The European version is absolutely delicious and if you never had that, you should get some jam or such (maybe pick one sold under the French name cassis to make sure it's not the skunk berry kind...)

[luzula]

It's the smell my grandmother thought was like crushed bedbugs, not the taste! And I think she meant the smell of the whole plant, including leaves and such. She grew the domesticated version in the garden, as do we. I don't think it smells unpleasant, but it is a very distinctive smell, and I can see how someone might dislike it given an association like that.

I tend to like red and white currants better than black one, especially eaten fresh.

[mrissa]

Oh yes bilberries yum!

[honigfrosch]

Red currants. They grew in my grandmother's garden.

[mme_hardy]

Red and black currants, never the white, I believe.

[sheafrotherdon]

I have three blueberry bushes in my yard, and the best part of summer is going out there in a morning to pick a handful to eat with yogurt for breakfast.

[rachelmanija]

How marvelous.

[em_h]

When I say I hate strawberries, I must specify that this is only cultivated strawberries. Wild strawberries are fine. Yet ironically, I spent an hour and a half today chopping cultivated strawberries for desserts for the drop-in.

I see I am in broad agreement with everyone else that raspberries are the monarch of berries.

I think I have had all colours of currant fresh except golden (my grandma had a lot of various currant bushes).

[em_h]

I used to climb my grandma's mulberry tree and just sit up in it eating fruit.

I have raspberries growing at the church, and also some currant bushes which are doing okay. A serviceberry tree which has not yet produced any fruit. My father had a huge and well-established blueberry patch at his house on PEI, but then the municipality uprooted it all for a new septic system.

[adrian_turtle]

When I lived in Troy, we could sit on our balcony and eat mulberries from the neighbors' tree.

[musesfool]

I've had lingonberries and red currants in jam, and boysenberries in yogurt.

[rushthatspeaks]

I used to camp in a place where we could pick wintergreen berries in the wild, and I highly recommend them. Minty but not overly so, sweet but not overly so, and with a more complex flavor than the wintergreen flavoring that gets put into things-- kind of like wintergreen, spearmint, and mint all rolled into one. I have no idea why they are not commonly grown, but I've never even seen them in a farmer's market.

[rachelmanija]

Ohhh, I'm going to see if I can find and grow these!

[rushthatspeaks]

I fell down a bit of a research hole when I was checking to see whether I can get wintergreen/teaberry stuff anywhere near me, and apparently there are actually two different species of edible wintergreen/teaberry. Gaultheria procumbens, eastern teaberry or American wintergreen, apparently grows throughout the eastern half of the continent, north as far as Newfoundland, south as far as Alabama, and west as far as Manitoba. That would be the one I had as a kid. Gaultheria ovatifolia, the western teaberry/Oregon spicy wintergreen, basically has the other end of the continent, from British Columbia to southern California. So that wouldn't even be an invasive if you grew it. I don't know how much the taste of the berries differs between species, though.

[rachelmanija]

Fascinating. I don't see the western type being sold.

Turns out that salal is a type of Gaultheria!

[loligo]

Thank you for reminding me about wintergreen! They grew in the woods by my grandmother's house when I was a kid, but I haven't seen them since then.

[ironymaiden]

In Pennsylvania they're called teaberries. Teaberry ice cream is my favorite flavor and it seems to be a regional thing. I didn't know that teaberry and wintergreen were the same plant until last year. I have a wintergreen in a pot on my balcony right now. (They're shade plants and I expect that's one of the reasons that they aren't a commercial crop.)

[rachelmanija]

I have a lot of shady areas and I'm going to try to grow some.

[rushthatspeaks]

I had no idea teaberry and wintergreen were the same plant! Thanks, that's really neat.

Definitely going to try to hunt down some of the ice cream now. I'm in Massachusetts, but apparently between them the major species of wintergreen have a range of the entire continent, so there may well be somebody near me who's making stuff with them.

[mrissa]

Oh yes, that's another thing I've eaten while hiking but never to home.