Boo! Berries

October 31, 2019

While it's great to know what you CAN eat, it's also important to know what you CAN'T eat. So in honor of Halloween, let me tell you about some very scary berries that you should definitely avoid.

POKE

No, not poké like the sushi bowl; nor Polk, like the president. This is a straggly, bushy plant that can grow over ten feet tall. Its stems are often magenta--especially now as the weather turns cold. It produces these gorgeous drooping clusters of fruit that early American colonists used for ink.

Some people say they look like grapes. They look nothing like grapes to me, but then, a recent post in a Facebook group, Edible Wild Plants (which is an awesome and very informative group--https://www.facebook.com/groups/ediblewildplants/) asked whether this plant was Elderberry. So I suppose mistaking it for a grape is not totally embarrassing. Again: Get a really good field guide. Look at the structure of the plant and the shape of its leaves, flowers, and fruit. There is no way you could mistake Poke for grapes, much less Elderberry.

The whole plant is toxic. Some sources say that the young shoots are edible when cooked, but with so many other enticing options out there, I'll just leave Poke alone.

DEADLY NIGHTSHADE

What's weird about nightshades is that there are a bazillion edible ones. Tomatoes are nightshades. So are potatoes and eggplants. There's even a wild kind, Black Nightshade, that looks a lot like this one--except that while the Deadly variety has purple flowers and red berries, the edible version has white flowers and black berries (with a delicate flavor like a cross between a tomato and a cherry). The red berries of the Deadly version are so tempting and voluptuous. But, given the name Deadly Nightshade, it makes sense to give them a pass.

DOLL'S EYES

Is that name not warning enough? This is a woodland plant (unlike Poke and Deadly Nightshade) that you hopefully won't see in urban or suburban settings (and not even very frequently in woodlands). They are not hiding their malice: I find their appearance as appealing as a Freddy Krueger mask . . . .

WINTERBERRY

They are so pretty! But use only for decorative purposes, please and thank you.

BITTERSWEET

It's become a family joke, how often I tell Steven, "When I lived in New Hampshire, I made Autumn wreaths out of Bittersweet and Rose (Floribunda, with the abundant tiny red berries.) I think Bittersweet is beautiful, in spite of its being invasive and its habit of pulling down mature trees by climbing and choking them. As the ditty goes: "Lovely to look at, Delightful to hold". . . . But don't eat it.

YEW

Harkening back to my childhood: Yew is a popular evergreen landscaping shrub, and our yard had Yew bushes growing beside our front sidewalk. Me being me, I'm sure I sampled the fruit, and apparently, it didn't kill me.

The red fruit itself is edible, and I saw a few recipes online for Yew jelly, etc. even though the seeds (those black spots you see in the photo on the left) are very toxic. It takes no more than three seeds to kill humans and animals!

Me being me, for the purposes of this blog, I had to try a sample. Honestly, the fruit was fairly sweet and mild, but also watery and gelid (like mucous). It would be incredibly tedious to separate the fruit from the seed to make anything edible. The best way to use this berry--if you had to at all--would be to put it in your mouth and use your tongue to separate the fruit from the poisonous seed, then spit out the pit. But we're definitely talking starvation survival here. . . .

Think of this blog as a public service announcement. I try the poison plants, so you don't have to!