Woodland Fruit Wander

After seeing baby beaked hazelnuts along the roadside this week, I ventured into our woods to see if we were lucky enough to have hazelnuts as well. What I found was so much more!! Here’s a roundup of some old friends and some new discoveries.

Nannyberries starting to form. They have a very large seed, but the flesh is delicious, like the related wild raisin tree’s name suggests.

Red elderberry — a beautiful, but poisonous elderberry. Note how the berry bunch is conical. The medicinal black elderberry (NOT SHOWN HERE) has flowers and berries that form on a flat bunch and ripen to a deep purple.

Wild gooseberries growing in the understory. The wildlife love this fruit, and I rarely see any ripen at all.

La piece de resistance: beaked hazelnuts!! The modern northern woodlands lack many of the edible nut trees that sustained generations on this land before the colonists cut down the forest and brought insects and disease that continue to attack some of our most valued trees. I was thrilled to find a few beaked hazelnut trees on our woods today and will keep an eye on the nuts to grab a few ripe ones before the squirrels can hide them all away.

The wild apples are struggling this year, but no doubt they will still feed many.

Our half wild hops are going strong, as usual. These hops grow deep in the woods and are leftover from beer making in centuries past. Judging by how fruity and delicious these hops are, our ancestors had some very good beer!