Ribes Sanguineum, Fruit And Flower

Day 331: Ribes sanguineum, the native Red-Flowering Currant so loved by hummingbirds that I planted two in my yard for my feathered friends' enjoyment, produces a dusty blue, freckled berry full of crunchy seeds. They are purportedly edible, but I find the lingering musty aftertaste undesirable. Some people in my acquaintance eat them, so a few years ago, I collected all my bushes produced and juiced them for jelly. The result, even though I mixed it with the berries of nursery-grown red-currant cultivar, still carried that dusty note. Lesson learned, I now prune the bushes back right after their blooming period is done, but a few fruits always manage to develop on the twigs I missed.

While I don't wish to eat products with preservatives and other chemical additives in them, there is a point at which harvesting "natural" foods passes into the category of "ridiculous." As I mentioned, some friends eat these, and even claim to enjoy them. Other friends (who will recognize the direction my finger is pointing) harvest the strangest greens for the table (notably Lapsana communis, an invasive weed). Thanks, but I'm not quite hungry enough to extend the "natural foods" fad far enough to encompass Nipplewort leaves or currants which leave a taste in your mouth like that you'd expect after bicycling down a dusty country road.

Fuchsia Flowers And Fruit

Day 359: Would it surprise you to learn that the fruit of hardy fuchsias is edible? Once again, I will remind my readers that the words "edible" and "desirable as food" have two entirely different meanings, but they're not as widely separated in this case as in many other instances. Fuchsia berries (the maroon lobes in the upper right of the image) are mildly sweet and bear a slight perfume to the palate. Oddly, I have never noticed any particular scent to the flowers of any of the ones I cultivate; the berries seem to be borne solely by the smaller-flowered varieties (Genii and Riccarotonii, presumably more closely related to the wild plant). I had planned to experiment with adding them to jelly this year, possibly using apple as the carrier as some people do when making mint or rose jelly, but despite the hummingbirds' best efforts (and they were very active), the plants have produced very little fruit when compared to past years. It was an experiment I was greatly anticipating, but unless the prodigious flowers still on the shrubs are fertilized and ripen quickly, it will have to wait until next autumn.

Fuchsia Parade

Day 297: It began with Genii (left), the only type of hardy fuchsia I knew about at the time. Then as I was browsing the internet for horticultural information on it, I discovered that there were other hardy fuchsias, some with flowers to rival the annual varieties common to hanging baskets. Typical of rabbit-holes, the ground beneath my feet slid away and down I went into a wonderland of perennials I had never suspected of existing. Today, my garden holds half a dozen of these eminently gratifying plants, making me wish I had room for more. Not only are different flower forms and colours available, there are foliage options as well. Genii's leaves are golden-green, while those of Army Nurse (center) are a middle hue. If darker foliage is to your liking, the rich hunter-green headlines the fat pink and purple flowers of Garden News (right). Not shown, Erecta carries its flowers pointing upward as its name implies, Dollar Princess wears a slightly rosier skirt than Army Nurse, and Ricartonii's flowers are even more slender than those of Genii. Genii and Ricartonii also form edible fruits which, although rather bland, would lend an interesting flavour to an apple jelly. Might have to try that this year!

Salal

Day 253: Salal (Gaultheria shallon) is a common understory plant here in the Pacific Northwest. Given optimum conditions, it can grow to six feet in height, but even less lofty stands of it could be described as the proverbial "impenetrable thicket." The leaves are leathery and stiff. The stems, flowers and berries are fuzzy and sticky (imagine velvet-like, resinous Velcro). Although they are not prickly or hard to remove like burrs, Salal flowers will adhere to fabrics such as wool socks or soft cotton shirts and leave your fingers feeling sticky after you've pulled off a dozen or so. The black berries resemble blueberries superficially, and are mildly sweet and edible. They can be made into jam or jelly; however, they are not particularly juicy and you'll have to gather more than you might expect. They can also be dried and used as an unusual snack. The foliage is wantonly harvested locally by those in the floral trade because it does not wilt, a practice which is leading to a decline in the plant regionally.

A funny aside here: when I was young (eight or nine), my mother warned me that some black-coloured berries might be poisonous. Because she was unfamiliar with Salal, she included it in her caution. I was horrified when a friend picked and ate them as we walked half a mile to the school bus stop, and for several days, I watched her closely, waiting for her to exhibit symptoms or drop dead. When she did neither, the incident fueled a growing distrust of my mother's botanical skills which had also informed me that red Huckleberries were poisonous, but on the same hand, it spurred me into further research to find out exactly which black berries she might have been trying to prevent me from eating. Nevertheless, I always viewed Salal with a certain degree of skepticism as regards its edibility. I did not try them for myself until I was an adult.

Too Much Like Work

Day 306: I seldom see fruit on Red-Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum) in the backcountry because the critters think they're delicious. On the other hand, humans might have some reservations on the subject. The flavour is rather bland (I hesitate to use the word "insipid") but not unpleasant, and I suspect they'd make a good jelly if you were willing to pull the blossom ends off each berry. I planted a couple of bushes in my yard to provide nectar for hummingbirds (they are drawn to the hot pink flowers), and was uurprised when the plants yielded up roughly half a cup of fruit. Never one to forgo Nature's provender, I picked them and then set to the project of cleaning them. Analysis: the caloric benefit doesn't justify the effort for a snack. However, if you could collect enough to put through a food mill and then filter the mash through a jelly bag to get juice, it might be worthwhile. Somehow I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

Doing The Splits

Day 353: The first of the Akebia pods has done the splits, revealing a fat cylindrical object which to my mind resembles some kind of sea slug. This is the edible portion of the fruit. Now I am going to ask you to use your imagination. Set the following pictures in your mind:

Imagine watermelon seeds which instead of being flat are egg-shaped, i.e., picture seeds which are roughly the size of watermelon seeds, but they're shaped like teardrops and they're hard. If you're familiar with pomegranate seeds, the seeds in your imagination would be similar, but pomegranate seeds are a little pointier on the small end.

Now mentally put yourself in the kitchen. You're cooking something which requires the addition of either confectioner's sugar or powdered stevia. As you pull open the plastic inner wrapper, you drop the box. A ~poof!~ of sweet dust flies into the air just as you're taking a breath. Some of the dust...not much, just a little...goes up your nostrils. It's not quite enough to make you sneeze, but close.

Ready? Do you have those two images clearly in your minds? Okay, if you were to wrap those teardrop-shaped seeds in a very thin coating of your sweetened, viscid nasal mucus and then were to stick a gob of them in your mouth, you'd get the idea of what the pulp of the Akebia fruit feels and tastes like.

Although the Akebia cross-pollination experiment has come to a successful conclusion, I do not think we'll go down this road again.

Akebia Fruit

Day 288: Even using the proper scientific terminology, it is difficult to write about the process of manual cross-pollination without it sounding risqué. My efforts in that regard are being rewarded with the production of approximately a dozen and a half Akebia fruits of various sizes, the largest of which are shown here. When in the flowering phase, the pistils of this cluster exhibited a heavier production of stigmatic fluid; pollen transfer was much easier to effect because the pistils were receptive. Size of the fruit indicated the number of ovules (seeds) successfully fertilized. These were within easy reach of my paint brush and I transferred pollen to the pistils several times during their period of receptivity. Whether or not the fruit proves to be worth the trouble as far as edibility is concerned, the experiment has expanded my grasp of the mechanics of botanical reproduction and, having seen the phases first-hand, I can now explain the process in intimate detail even if doing so makes my readers blush.

Serviceberry

Day 229: Alternatively pronounced "SARviceberry," Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) may also be referred to as "Shadbush," a common name which reflects the fact that it blooms concurrently with the start of the shad run in both east and west coast rivers. Native peoples relied on such indicators as a calendar of food-source availability. Serviceberry also provided edible fruit in early to mid-June, berries similar in size and somewhat in taste to blueberries, if not quite as juicy. In Canada, this shrub wears yet another common name "Saskatoon" and in the midwest, it is known as "June-berry." Bushes can grow to 20' in height and can be found from sea level to approximately 4000' altitude.