the native fruits here like seagrape and pond apple are insipid, havent found anything worth growing.

Some crabapples planted for bloom are quite good for jam or drinks.
olga

Raspberries under the Aspen canopies near Tennessee Pass, CO. Watch out for bears!

Seagrape makes wonderful jelly as do some of the native (or maybe naturalized) opuntia cactuses in South Florida, and the cocoplum fruit is at least worth a taste (marshmallow consistency). There are some huckleberries on sands there too and blueberries are found as far south as the northern tip of Lake Okeechobee. A dwarf persimmon grows there too but I never found one ripe. Some of the wild subtropical grapes might be OK for wine or jelly.

Here farther north in the south we have pawpaws and muscadine grapes that can be up to fine tasting or excellent, black cherries, some wild blueberries, wild plums, maypops that are at least OK, and crabapples at least worthy of jelly.

And red mulberries here.

South Florida is half taken over with naturalized weedy guavas too, that are edible out of hand and make excellent aromatic jelly.

Both South Florisa and the rest of the south have wild elderberries too, for jelly or wine.

I love Juneberries (amelanchier) and one many people have never tried that's quite good is nannyberry, a native viburnum.

In the 1920s some of the low-growing (6 foot?) juneberries were being grown commercially near Atlanta and sold as blueberries.

Years ago I noticed while driving across the country a wild passionflower vine at a highway rest area. It was early winter and most of the deciduous plants had lost their leaves. This vine had grown up and covered a small bush. It was covered with dried up fruit so I gathered some seeds thinking that this form was very fruitful. I've grown it in a pot for years but just now have it in the ground in the garden (I may regret doing it, they are highly invasive). The fruit taste really close to the purple tropical ones that I've tasted. The only problem is that most of the fruit is hollow so you don't get a lot of juice from each fruit but I like this vine because it puts off a lot of fruit.

I usually make prickly pear jelly but I get tired of the metallic tang to it after the first two jars. I still make it but I give most of it away.

Nannyberry is pretty good. I like to run them through my food mill (victorio strainer) and collect the pulp. Its like plum butter. The food mill is a great tool for separating out the seeds & stems. Good for jams, jellies, fruit leather, etc. Other stuff I've run through my food mill are....

-Autumn Olive
-Highbush cranberries
-Rose hips
-Mulberries
-Blackberries
-Crabapples
-Prickly pear
-Fijoa

ummm there must be more but I'm drawing a blank. I travel with this thing so it gets around.

Back home in East Tennesee, the main wild fruits were blackberries and muscadines. There were other wild grapes, black cherries, mulberries, and probably many others, since we were near the foothills of the Smokys and had a variety of micro climates. However, the ones everybody gathered and used were blackberries and muscadines. Here in Missery I have blackberries, but the only muscadines are some I planted last year. They froze to the roots last winter and will probably do so again when we get the -8 degrees predicted for tomorrow night. Ah well....they may not have tasted as good as I remember anyway.

Chuck

The only wild fruits I had that were memorably good were wild huckleberries in the pacific northwest and wild blueberries in the white mountains of NH. Plus great wild black raspberries in many locations and some great wild alpine strawberries I can't remember where. Most of the wild fruits I remember trying were blah or spitters.

Scott

Growing up in NorCal I did a lot of hiking, camping and fishing. It was pretty common to find a thicket of blackberry or Prunus Americana or even an Apple or Crab Apple tree. Hard to pick a favorite. When you are out hiking for hours and you are hungry whatever you find is your favorite. The most impressive though was an old Granny Smith in the middle of an abandoned pasture. That thing must have been at least 40' tall. There was a 40'+ tall what I believed to be a Weeping Santa Rosa plum that must have been grown from seed. That tree dropped so much fruit each year that you could not put a silver dollar under its canopy without it touching a piece of fruit. Man I lived that tree.

Wild black raspberries were everyones favorite in northern Illinois. The mulberries were small but worthwhile. Gooseberries worth a nibble here and there. The wild strawberries were very small but a tasty treat. The blackberries always seemed small, diseased, and not nearly as good as the black raspberries.

I've tried prickly pear cactus fruit here and find it pretty pathetic.

Seems that the black raspberries are favorites of many. I'd like to try some again.

Mayapples and Maypops here in TN. Elderberries are everywhere as well as blackberry. Crab apples make good jelly. Paw-paws are nice if you can find them ripe and of course Persimmons.

I remember years ago being on a hike and coming on to an area that had been chemically cleared for power lines a year or 2 before. Taking the place of whatever brush had been growing there were all of these wild red raspberries simply loaded with perfect fruit. I've never seen raspberries like this growing in a natural setting but I have to think conditions must occasionally serve them without the use of herbicide as occurred in this situation.

I don't know how I forgot blackberries (and dewberries) and persimmons.

Regarding the native maypop or passionflower, has anyone found an especially good one to eat, especially one with less of the musky aroma? I have read that such occasionally occur but have never found one. I plan on starting 20 or so seeds this spring from a moderately promising one and let them cover a brushpile until I can try their fruits.

BTW: those in South Florida can often find good fruit for jelly in street-side hedges (or at least we as kids got away with collecting them). Suriname cherry (often decent eaten out of hand) and Natal plum (Carissa). I have even seen longans grown by the city as the street-side tree in West Palm Beach.

Where I grew up, there were wild blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.

But if I traveled a bit north, I could pick thimbleberries. Anybody ever try those? Very sour!

Don't forget wild currants!

My thimbleberry experiences have been uniformly great. They are very common here in Oregon/Washington westside in foothills. Very intense, rich flavor. They must be deep red and very loose on the hull before picking. Excellent for jelly, juice, and syrup. Michigan has a small thimbleberry industry.

Huckleberries excellent also. Sizable h-berry industry here. Red huckleberries great when cooked.

Grouseberries very good but tiny.

Wild strawberries - but you have to find somebody else to pick and clean them because it takes forever! So tiny and so good!
I have about 70 jars of wild grape jam in the cupboard - yum.
Mulberry jam - good in pancakes.
blackberries, raspberries, bluberries...

Thanks for adding all the interesting posts to this thread!

I had a long reply ready, because you bring up so many things that I am curious about, but I don't want to bore anyone...

So I'll just limit it to the following thoughts:

I'm surprised nobody mentioned wineberries from back east, which I think are better than red raspberries in taste and productivity...

Prickly pears are a mixed bag, but I've encountered some excellent ones (in NM, AZ, and CA) that are great out of hand (once the glochids are scraped away) and make superb jelly without any of the metallic taste that TriangleJohn gets back in NC. Interesting, as Fruitnut says, I've also heard from several other people that the prickly pears in Texas are not very good...

Anybody else like so-called strawberry cactus? I have been very impressed with these hedgehog cactus fruits that have deciduous spines and small tasty black seeds -- they really do resemble strawberries in flavor...

Well, keep those wild fruit stories coming!
Thanks.

The PNW has more than Himalayan blackberries, which are not even native, but most prolific. There are Dew berries, 3 types of Huckleberries, Thimble berries, Salmon berries, cherries. I'm sure there are more, but these are what I remember most from my childhood.

Thanks noinwi...
I knew the PNW had more to offer, I've heard people call it a wild berry paradise, but I had only encountered the non-native blackberries in a weekend visit, precisely because they are so abundant even in urban/suburban settings.

Regarding salmon berries: How is the taste (I've heard bland or insipid most often associated with them)? Are they produced in abundance?

Are you referring to wild cherries? What kind?

Thanks for the info...

What I remember about salmon berries is they they were mild, but sweet, the thimble berries being similar...not huge bursts of flavor, but sweetness. There usually weren't huge amounts of them, but small patches of bushes here and there, depending on the environment. One of them grew more in shady moist areas but I don't remember which one. Being a kid, finding anything sweet and edible while tromping through the woods was tremendous fun. My grandparents had a few acres on the edge of a large wood and my brothers and I were always playing in the woods when we visited. My GM would take me on huckleberry picking expeditions(when my bros didn't want to drag me along with them)and she would make pies with them. This was back in the 50s and 60s when the berries and even native rhodies were plentiful throughout the woods.
I don't know what kind of cherries they were...may not have been native, and could have been escapees from old homesteads. Large trees with small, very dark sweet cherries. They had large pits, so were not good for pie-making, but for plain eating(then of course spitting the pits out at your siblings).
The Himalayan Blackberries are great, although very invasive. The Evergreen blackberries(or that's what we always called them)are smaller but have more flavor. The Dewberries even smaller, but tasty...these were the ones that tore up our ankles when we would trip on them while running through the brush.
One of my faves was the Red Huckleberries. They were usually growing out of decaying tree stumps. I would pick a handful before stuffing them all in my mouth to get the most flavor. Ah, my tomboy days!

Sweet salmonberries are unusual, but this fruit can be a refreshing, watery lump to a thirsty hiker.

Salmonberries will fill up a container much faster than will thimbleberries. Both collapse under their own weight since they are hollow.

Huckleberries in easily-accessed areas of the PNW have been over-harvested in recent decades, as everyone, every bakery, every restaurant, wants their share. The old-timers who had the luxury of waiting until after the first frost (comes fairly early in the mountains) to pick roadside berries know how good the huckleberry can be. Nowadays you have to have "secret patches", much like secret fishing holes.

I always liked the scuppernogs (muscadine grape) that grow in NC. I've read that when some of the first European explorers landed, they marveled at how full the coast was with grapes. One of them from this time still lives from that time period on a place called Roanoke Island in NC. Link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mother Vine in NC

Huckleberries and wild strawberries, currents, the tiny, tiny dwarf whortleberry, some wild raspberries that grow near streams here, and choke cherries, in that order. (Western Montana)

Chokecherries, plums, buffalo berries. Buffalo berries are quite tart so I like to just hold them in my mouth and slowly suck. They give off a flavor reminiscent of grapefruit.

Don't know if they are native, but we call them juneberries, elsewhere they are clove currants. Wonderful to eat the dried ones off the bushes in winter/spring. In late summer, they are good fresh or in jams and jellies, and not as sour as the wild or tame currants I've eaten.

My first favorite wild fruits from childhood were strawberries, black raspberries, blueberries, muscadines and blackberries. I transplanted them from the wild and grew them in my yard. Later i found persimmon, pawpaw, passionfruit and juneberries, all delicious in their own way, and are good eaten fresh. I'm now starting to make good use of elderberries and aronia, which are good processed, and are loaded with antioxidants.

My first favorite wild fruits from childhood were strawberries, black raspberries, blueberries, muscadines and blackberries. I transplanted them from the wild and grew them in my yard. Later i found persimmon, pawpaw, passionfruit and juneberries, all delicious in their own way, and are good eaten fresh. I'm now starting to make good use of elderberries and aronia, which are good processed, and are loaded with antioxidants.

Ah, wild fruits.... I've had the fortune to eat a lot in my life and travels. Growing up in Southeast Missouri (and now retiring back here) we had blackberries, pawpaws, persimmons, dewberries, grapes, wild plums, and dew berries. All deliciously divine.

Then in Colorado and the Mountain West chokecherries, sand plums, raspberries, and huckleberries (Montana) kept my hikes and kayak trips "fruitful." Same with prickly pears and other cactus fruit in Arizona and Utah, wild blueberries in Alaska (watch out for bears and moose!) and all kinds of berries in Washington state and British Columbia.

England, Ireland, Italy -- lots of gooseberries, grapes, currants, figs and other treasures in the fence rows and rock walls.

In Ecuador, I picked and ate several types of berries, which the locals lumped together under the name of "moras" (Spanish for what else, berries). The most common "mora" looked like a cranberry but grew on a 4-6 foot pruned bush. Very tasty preserves, and mora ice cream is the all time best ice cream flavor.

Thanks for asking the question, it's enjoyable to remember these culinary delights.

Growing up in CT, I enjoyed picking wineberries, which my brother and I called "red blackberries" (not sure why...maybe my grandmother called them that?). Last spring when I finally got a house with a yard, I saw (lots of) them again and finally discovered their real name.

While productive, I don't think that they beat cultivated red raspberries in productivity or flavor and they are definitely smaller. The Autumn Britten I put in were much tastier. But both me and my kids stripped the wineberries as soon as they turned red (around July 1st last year), anxiously waiting for the rest to ripen. They do have a bit of residue though which leaves your hands greasy/sticky.

The wineberries also have some truly nasty thorns. Late in the summer I dug up half a dozen for my brother's yard ("that'll keep those neighborhood kids from cutting across my lawn..."). He may have more than he bargains for soon though, as they spread like crazy. I'm finding them everywhere in my yard, and I have a hard time bringing myself to destroy berry bushes...

Cool, somebody else familiar with the wineberries. My grandparents and mom also had a "made-up" name for them: Chinese raspberries! This turns out to be not so far off, since they are non-native, originally from Asia.

I have to agree that cultivated red raspberries are better than wineberries, but wild red raspberries always leave me a bit disappointed due to their paucity and sometimes lack of sweetness.

Cape Cod: beach plums (Prunus Maritima), rosehips (Rosa Rugosa) and wild cranberries everywhere.

wintergreen is just the best. When I bite into one of them I close my eyes and see a york pepermint patty commercial. I don't know if the name is right it is a ground cover 4-5 dark green hard leaf with a pale red berry. The leaf is minty also but I chew them and spit out the pulp.

Ravenh2001-
Your description of wintergreen sounds correct, except for the flavor. Wintergreen berries to me taste exactly like Pepto-Bismol. (In fact, on the Pepto site, they even refer to it as "Wintergreen flavor") So, as long as you like Pepto, and don't mind their strange texture, you'll like these berries.
As for the leaves, yes they are edible, but I don't remember them tasting like a peppermint patty either.
If it turns out I'm mistaken, or you do have a peppermint patty plant, please let me know. :-)
-Glenn

From the coast of Maine-
wild strawberries-hulls and all(very fine)
endless wild blueberries
sugar plums(amalancier)
teaberry
wild raspberries-endless
wild blackberries-endless
wild gooseberries
wild black cherry-dead ripe only
There are more but these are the only ones I like.
My Grandmother would be gone all day and would pick a 12 qt pail full of wild strawberries. That and fresh baked bisquits for her 11 children made for a great early summer dessert.

If there wasn't 3' of snow I would do a pepto taste test. The color is right for the berries tho.

Tried baking some wintergreen berries into a pound cake once. The berries dissolved and left no wintergreen flavor in the cake. I have a peppermint patty in a drawer and a wintergreen plant in the yard with no snow, but no pepto bismol in the cabinet.

I've played around with wintergreen berries and leaves before. I also like the flavor, but it can be somewhat faint, and very easily dissipates because it is so volatile. That might explain whey the baking experiment did not work.

The only way to capture it in a tea, is to put the leaves in cold water and let the whole thing ferment for a week, then drink it cold. Any heating will drive away the wintergreen oils quickly.

I grew up in Tucson, AZ and I will forever associate manzanita apples and manzanita wood with my grandmother. She introduced me to the plant and used to do wood carvings with the beautiful red wood. When she was living on Mt. Lemmon she would make a spearmint tea from the wild spearmint that grows up there. Good memories. :)