[nemie]

Last night I found two more berry trees, this time in my own garden, and one of them looks like the crop is ready to pick, would like to make some jam from it but of course will need to know they are safe to eat.

So the pic for the first berrys here:

black skin, green inside nice and soft and alot of juice when crushed.






Ill post the other tree in a sec after i upload the pics.

[nemie]

Tree number 2

[TTG]

I might be totally wrong, and usually am, but the way the second tree berries have grown in the bunches they look similare to elderberries. Of course they could be immature and will later go more ripe elderberry colour later. I am sure you are aware that there are better uses for elderberry than jam.   Hic! Hic!

<That's wine BTW, but I reckon you would have thought of that>

Could the first one be something like service berry or whatever it is called. I once saw it on a tv survival / bushcraft show (Ray Mears I think).

Probably very wrong and like a lot of things you need to be sure before eating or cooking.

[blackisgreen]

elder the 2nd the 1st looks like chokeberry

[TTG]

Woohoo! I was right about the second one then, not very good at plant identification. <gives myself pat on the back>

Chokeberry, of course. That and the wild service berry (think that's its name) were the only other two wild berries I knew that the first one could have been. Is chokeberry the one with a small amount of cyanide in it? Also doesn't it have a bitter seed that will need to be removed for jam. BTW if this is the berry with trace cyanide in it I understand you do need to eat a lot for anything bad to happen and I think cyanide breaks down with heat. Will need to check with some chemist friends (I seem to collect chemists as friends like others collect seeds). Anyway as I said it pays to find out these things for sure.

[TTG]

Almost forgot. Elderberry makes very good wine, it seems a waste to make jam out of it. The flowers for a white and the berries for a very rich almost cabernet style of wine. Just watch the sugar content in the fruit (and any added to the mix) as it can become quite potent can elderberry wine.

Now crab apple also makes a good wine but only after some aging. My old Dad found a few bottles once that were about 14 years old. They were really awful when he first tried the finished bottle so he threw all but 5 bottles away. Somehow they survived a few house moves but got lost. When they were found we opened one fully expecting it to have been really bad, but no! It had aged very well and although not sparkling it left a sort of sparkle or sparkley tang on the tongue just like a good champagne or other sparkling wine. In fact you could almost see the bubbles forming, just never quite nucleated into a full bubbly.

Sorry, off topic.

[sunshineband]

Sorry to disagree but the ID of this one is important:

Tree number one with the black berries is actually dogwood and the berries are not edible. Take care not to harvest these.



(Second is elder as several have said, it's just not ripe yet) All sorts of yummy uses for these 

[SG6]

Hate to say this but although the berries on the second look like elderberry the leaves don't look like elder.

[sunshineband]

Hate to say this but although the berries on the second look like elderberry the leaves don't look like elder.

I think they probaly are: it's just the reflection of the sun on them that gives them a different appearance. I've just been and looked at one outside 

[HilaryG]

I definitly agree with sunshineband. The 2nd being elderberry    and the 1st is dogwood (cornus)  . I've got both in my garden.

[sunshineband]

Glad someone else recognised the cornus, Hilary  as well

We have quite a thicket of it at school, and although it is lovley I wouldn't want to eat the berries 

[HilaryG]

On the subject of strange berries..........I ate some of the little berries from my amalancier tree last autumn.........they are really tasty, if you don't mind the little hard bit on the end! I might incorporate them into a pie if the blackbirds leave me any..........unless you think they are poisonous.......but hey, I'm still here........

[sunshineband]

Now they could be service berries 


http://folsomnps.org/FNPS%20Gallery%202/target8.html

which are of course edible. I don't much fancy the hard bit on the end either 

[HilaryG]

Well I didn't know that amalanchier was called service tree. Thanks for that, sunshineband.

[nemie]

Thanks for the replies, I am still; unsure I think they might be service berries as well, but until I know for sure they won't get made into jam