Monday, June 16, 2008

Ripening Berries



The wild blackberries are starting to get ripe. Jo picked a little less than a pint Sunday afternoon on our walk along the road. This particular variety grows near the house and has some of the biggest wild berries I've ever seen. I've thought about seeing if I could get some canes started in the garden, but haven't gotten around to it yet.



The huckleberries are also ripening. There are so many species of huckleberries and their closely related kin wild blueberries that I don't even try sorting them out. (In some cases, one must count the seeds inside the fruit.) I just enjoy eating them.



Huckleberry blooms from 4/18/08. Not the same plant as above and perhaps not even the same species. Around here huckleberry blooms range from white to pink to red. I really don't know if the color differences are indicative of different species or different growing conditions.

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11 comments:

Mungo said...

Those blackberries look good! Great photographs,

Cheers,

Mungo

Louise said...

As a former resident of the Missouri Ozarks, I'm terribly jealous of those blackberries. And I don't believe I've ever seen a huckleberry bloom. Really nice! It looks like something here in teh desert we call Texas Cactus, but ours is a shrub-type thing with spiky leaves. Really pretty picture.

Tom said...

Your black berries are well advanced than ours.. and as for you Huckleberries this is the first time I've ever seen then... if fact I have only ever heard of Huckleberry Fin.. They do look tasty though.

Shelley said...

Loved the photos of the berries! Our blackberry season doesn't start until August.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

Our blackberries are still little lumpy green knots. I am looking forward to them ripening.

I have never seen a huckleberry. I can't wait to see a ripe one. Please remember to show some.

Anonymous said...

Our berries should be at this point within the next week or two! stunning photos!

Reader Wil said...

Very beautiful all your photos!

Anonymous said...

Oh I miss black berries, which we occasionally see out here in New Mexico -- along a creek. But I've not seen wild blueberries out here. I may have told you that I used to live in Northern Maine and then as a kid in western Maine and the blueberries were SO THICK in western Maine that I could plunk right down in a patch and literally eat for a hour before I had to move. Up in northern Maine near Baxter State Park where I lived several years ago, the blueberries weren't quite as thick or as low to the ground. And since it was more remote there were a lot more bears. They LOVE blueberries and so I always had to keep an eye open in case I invaded bear feeding territory.

Egghead said...

I often wondered if the huckleberries in other parts of our country are as good as they are in Northeastern Oregon where I grew up. I now live in Western Oregon and although we get huckleberries they are a much milder flavor than the northeastern end. I go back each summer for a long four day weekend just to sit in the mountains and pick to my hearts content. I am a huckleberry at heart girl. The blackberries grow wild everywhere here and are considered a very invasive problem. However, they are no where near ready...should be around July/August.
I love your site...very informative.

Lana Gramlich said...

You've just made me realize that I forgot to remind the hubby to pick some of our blackberries, before the birds & other critters get them all...

monkeyholler said...

July, two years ago, here in the NW Arkansas Ozarks, we had lots of huckleberries on our 24 acres. The late 2007 freeze killed all the blooms so we had none. This year, weather cooperated. Here it is June 29, and, although we have several hundred to a thousand bushes, we've been able to pick only about one dozen berries. I am not sure what happened this year, but it does not look as if we will get any more berries than that. Frankly, we do not remember even seeing blooms on the bushes this year.