Location Taken: Mystery Cave State Park, Minnesota
Time Taken: June 2010

There are a large number of semi-wild berry plants scattered throughout my Grandparent’s place. And I being a little girl running semi-wild myself for many years, would occasionally check to see if there were any ripe berries. And then eat them. Of course.

I should insert the standard warning to not eat berries you can’t identify, since there are a lot of poisonous ones out there, but well, these plants were ones pointed out to me by relatives, so they were, shall we say, previously tested.

Most of them were probably escapees from the large garden my Grandma still has, and I raided that garden with glee as well. She has had raspberries and blackberries and redcurrants and a whole lot of other tasty things in there over the years.

…I haven’t had a redcurrant in forever. They don’t package at all well, and aren’t popular in America anyway, so they aren’t sold in stores, but they’re really tasty…

Speaking of fruit that doesn’t package well, there’s also a large mulberry tree on the property, which I also raid with glee. They produce copious amounts of fruit each year, coating the ground in soft, squishy black fruits. So it is of course my moral duty to reduce the number of berries that rot on the ground. Of course.

There’s also a scattering of blackberry plants in the meadow by the garden, which seem to do better wild than in the garden. They’re either some of those escapees or were potentially intentionally seeded by my Grandma (or any of the many local animals). I haven’t asked.

The rarest berry plant is a black raspberry bush tucked away near the old barn. They look fairly close to raspberries, and are a bit less sweet but more flavorful, so they’re a favorite of mine.

Mind you, this is the Eastern black raspberry. There’s a related species on the west coast that’s also occasionally called black raspberry. That’s more commonly referred to as whitebark raspberries or blue raspberry, though.

Huh, blue raspberry… *checks* Yup, apparently that blue raspberry artificial flavor you find in a lot of places is based off of the whitebark raspberry instead of the standard raspberry. And here I just thought it was clever marketing to keep from having too many red flavors of things. Though that probably is why it’s colored such a bright blue rather than the nearly-black blue of the fruit itself…

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