One can usually tell the edibility of a wild edible fruit by its sweetness. If it is sweet, then it is probably meant to be eaten by humans or some human-like animal (though I don’t recommend random sampling to any readers). In next week’s article I will discuss the techniques that an African hunter-gatherer transplanted to the U.S. in order to identify wild edible plants as food sources in our completely foreign botanical communities.
Wild Grapes (Vitis species): America has wild grapes of many species and several of these species occur on campus including wine grapes (picture below). Vikings from Norway, Iceland, and Greenland made several voyages to the coast of New England starting with Lief Erikson around 1,000 AD. Finding tons of grapes, the Vikings named this land Vinland, the land of wild grapes.
The grapes are my favorite for eating raw and also they’re good for pie, extremely delicious jams and wine. Grape leaves are also edible, best in early spring. The grapes in the photograph below are located on the fence along the track. Most of the grapes are still green and ripening, yielding fruit that will sweeten after the first frost. Some of the grapes that have been cut open are alcoholic and others have become raisins on the vine.
- Growing thick on the fence by the track and many wait to be picked— Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness… (Wallace Stevens)
- All over campus buildings, ripens in mid-fall and becomes sweet after the first frost. Large seeds are digestable too.
Kousa Dogwood (Cornus Kousa): Tacara and Natalie, tasting the fruit of the Kousa Dogwood (pictured below). “Looks like a pokemon ball, tastes like a cross between mango and banana!” The fruit is fleshy and the outer skin fibrous and rough. Different trees have their own distinct tastes. The larger, deeper red, more ripened fruits are the sweetest and most palatable. Not mentioned in any of my four guidebooks to wild edible plants, the Kousa Dogwood’s edibility is discovered by a safe-tasting procedure (look at the introduction to this blog for the procedure), or by looking on online forums.
Kousa Dogwoods are native to eastern Asia, and those scattered around campus were planted ornamentally. Many birds and mammals eat dogwood fruits and disperse their seeds. Birds include Northern Cardinal, American Robin, Swallow, Woodpeckers, and Starling. Mammals include Raccoon and Squirrel.
- “Looks like a pokemon ball, tastes like a cross between mango and banana!” The ornamental trees are scattered around campus.
Hopa Crab Apple (Malus hopa): Approximately thirty Hopa ornamental crab apples (Malus hopa), have been planted just east of the main parking lot (depicted below). Few people know the value of these apples and so most of them (or all of them) go to waste every year. The trees bear hundreds of tiny red apples.
Some of these apples have dried on the tree from fall of 2010 and taste like raisins, also making a nice ferment.
Offensive to taste when raw, these same properties make the apples resistant to pests and also make them ripe for the very best jelly.
The full recipe given by Euell Gibbons in his book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, is as follows: “Boil together 5 cups of sugar, 3 cups of wine vinegarand 1 cup of water. Tie 1 sliced lemon, 3 sticks of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of whole cloves in a cheesecloth bag and add to the sirup. Boil all for 10 minutes, let the sirup partially cool, then add 4 quartz of Hopas with the blossom ends removed, but with the stems left on. Heat very slowly to 180 degrees and maintain that heat for 10 minutes. Pour into sterilized jars, seal with sterilized lids and process the jars in water heated to 180 degrees for another 10 minutes. Store in a dark place so the crabs will not lose their bright-red color. Serve with any meal!”
- Extremely bitter and astringent raw, these properties make it the aristocrat of cooking apples for the very finest jelly. There are thirty hopa trees found next to the main parking lot.Tasting like raisins, these ornamental hopa crap apples dried on the tree after ripening in fall of 2010.These apples ripened in the fall of 2010 and have dried on the tree, tasting like raisins they also make a nice cider ferment.
Yew (Taxus baccata): Native to central europe, the yew is a common ornamental plant of New York City, with nice dark evergreen leaves and attractive red berries. When I was five years old, I remember picking one of these berries and eating it as I walked through central park. Mucilaginous and slightly sweet, they could be eaten whenever I passed by. I would always spit out the seeds. As it turns out, the fleshy part of the fruit is perfectly edible and sweet, while the seeds are highly poisonous and contain cyanide. Most poisonings across the world from wild edible plants happen to children. Birds eat the berries and the seeds pass through their digestive systems intact, so that they don’t absorb the poisons. I have also observed squirrels eating the berries on Queens College campus and I am sure these berries provide good food for a great many species of birds.
- Common ornamental evergreen with tasty berries and deadly seeds.
David Jakim
