Foraging for Edible Wild Plants: A Field Guide to Wild Berries

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3. Make a lot of racket in the berry patch. Bears like berries, too, but will instinctively move away if they sense humans approaching. You learned this from birth if you're from grizzly country in Alaska or the Yukon. But contrary to common (mis)knowledge, the common black bear of the lower 48 and Canada can also pose a danger to people. Don't surprise them.

Common Wild Berries of Central and Eastern North America

Bramble Fruits, Rubus Species: Blackberries, Raspberries, Dewberries, Wineberries

Blueberries

Appearance: Red to purple-black, round to oval, seedy aggregate fruits measuring a half inch to an inch; variably sweet to sour, juicy to dried-out, depending on species, rainfall and age. Hundreds of species; all edible. Longish, dark purple blackberries pull off a stem, rounder raspberries slip off a half-round cap. Bush varieties grow on long, thorny canes that sprout from perennial roots and live only one fruiting season. Dead canes persist for years, creating bramble patches that no berry-fancier but a rabbit could love. Low growing blackberries, called dewberries, fruit on low creepers with short thorns that can't resist snagging your jeans or socks.

Mourning Warbler with Wild Blackberries

Location: East and Northwest. Dry, open ground, sunny meadows, road and field margins, "disturbed ground." Some varieties enjoy sandy soil. Blackberries grow farther south than raspberries.

Season: Profusion of white to pink, open-petaled flowers bloom in spring, fruit appears summer to fall. Blackberries arrive two weeks later than raspberries.

Warnings: None. No aggregate berry (those, like raspberries, that are made up of clusters of juicy little drupelets) is poisonous to man or beast.

Blueberries, Huckleberries

Appearance: Highbush variety grows on six-to 20-foot, woody-stemmed, evenly rounded bushes. Lowbush variety grows on dense creepers along the ground and up to two-feet high. Displays downhanging, white, bell-shaped flowers in spring; in summer, sprouts sprays of familiar round, blue fruits, not shiny, often dusted with white powder, with five small blue petal-like calyx lobes at the blossom end.

Location: Blueberries need an acid soil. They do well in bogs and barrens with leached-out sand or peat soil. Dried up beaver ponds (flat spots in rolling hill country) are good. Oak trees can indicate good blueberry land.

Season: Flowers in spring, berries in summer.

Warnings: The arguably toxic (the books don't agree) pokeweed berry has a roughly similar appearance to blueberries, but grows thinly on a rough shrub with long leaves and red stems. Unappetizing (they just look poisonous), glossy, single-drupe berries are dark red-purple, scalloped around margins and wider than deep. They come larger, same size or smaller than a blueberry, with or without a short stem per berry, and grow lined up close together around the end of a thin branch. Mature root, seeds and rind of the stem are highly toxic.

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