A Primer on Red Berries

We have an embarrassment of riches at this time of year. So many berries! Enough to fatten Interior bears--who do not have access to the rich salmon runs--enough to last all the harsh winter. The Arctic region is harsh in weather but rich in nutrients. It's why orcas come up to the Arctic to feed and don't just hang around Hawai'i. Tropical soils and seas are comparatively nutrient-poor.

Clockwise from the top: Aqupiks or cloudberries, rose hips, raspberries, blueberries, and nagoonberries. You can download pdfs about these lovely things at the UAF Cooperative Extension Services website. I cannot believe that they give nagoonberry recipes. Are they crazy? Who does anything other than eat them all the day they are picked? There is even nagoonberry fruit leather, which I think has to be some kind of crime. If I see anybody make that, I am definitely calling the police.

Among the nice berries we have, there are: blueberries, which are easy to identify; the compound berries (raspberries, aqpiks, and nagoonberries), which are also easy to identify; and lots of non-compound red berries. Because those single red berries can be confused, and because there is one that is deadly poison, I decided to do a primer.

OK first up: These are currants, and not common:

A berry must be indentified by its leaf shapes and growth patterns, not just the looks of the berry itself. Note the shape of the leaves. Also note whether the plant is low to the ground and purely herbacious; or on higher, woody stalks; or if it's forming an actual bush.

These are soapberries. Southern indigenous groups, such as Tlingit and Haida, as well as Canadian Indigenous groups, apparently prize them highly, but Interior Alaska Natives are kinda meh about them. They are not tasty, but as their name indicates, they do saponify in water, and you can squish them up and use them to wash your hands.

These are baneberries and are extremely poisonous. Just a few berries can kill a small child. Note that they grow in a cluster, like a bunch of grapes, and grow sticking up from the leaves. An Inupiaq rule of thumb for red berries is: If it grows dangling down from the leaves, it's safe. If it grows sticking up from the leaves, it's dangerous. It also has a variation that is white in color, but I have never seen that one.

These are dwarf dogwood. The berries are not poisonous, but not tasty either. Just leave them. They are pretty!

These are bearberries. Sometimes they are black. And their foliage turns bright red, quite early. Like any day now. Much like the dwarf dogwood berries, they are... not poisonous, but not tasty, either.

These are highbush cranberries. They are rich in nutrients and antioxidants, but people in the Fairbanks region are so spoilt with other nice things that we don't pick them. Like "true" cranberries, they are sour and need to be mixed with sugar--either in jam or syrup or pie--to be tasty. They are slightly sweeter after the first frost. In the falltime, their foliage gives of a smell that to me smells like damp gym socks. I always know that summer is turning into fall when the sweet, beguiling perfume of labrador tea gives way to this dank scent.

OK all of the above photos are season-appropriate (late July to early August), but in the interest of completion, I'll post an old photo of what we call lowbush cranberries, which Europeans call lingonberries. These grow on hardy evergreen shrubs, and right now they are green. They do not ripen until September or so, and with every frost, they sweeten. You will not mistake these for any other red berry as they are the only things that ripen this late; they are also very distinctive-looking. Also, like "true" cranberries that are grown on farms in Masschusetts and show up on Thanksgiving tables, they have naturally high levels of pectin and will solidify into cranberry jelly sauce after you cook them with sugar.

If you find any still frozen and still on the bushes in deep winter, they will be partially fermented, juicy, and extremely tasty.

As long as I was picking berries, I decided to harvest and process the rhubarb from my garden. Rhubarb is a perennial that is extremely productive. People around here joke about rhubarb the same as gardeners everywhere joke about zucchini: Look your doors when you leave your car, or your neighbors will leave you with zucchini or rhubarb!

We have such lovely things!

And I'm also spoilt and buy things from the store. Look who is Very Interested in my honeydew!

Thistle gets crazy-eyes over honeydew!

Cricket loves honeydew, too!