Salmonberries

I had salmonberries for breakfast this morning.  I even got a few that were ripe.  That's rather rare, since you have to fight the squirrels and the birds for them.

I like berries.  I guess cherries aren't considered berries but I like them too.  I like blueberries.  I like strawberries, although I despair of getting any that I grow, since the squirrels definitely seem to attack them just before they get ripe.  I think this is quite unfair: I even put ClearGuard(TM) around the pot with the strawberries in it, but they still attack the berries.  On the other hand, somebody in the lower part of the development, who has strawberries randomly placed outside their fence alongside the path, have lovely ripe berries.  It's not fair.  (But I still haven't raided their berries.)

I rather overdosed on blackberries when I was a kid.  Of course, because they were free (for her), Mom made sure that we had lots of blackberry pies, and lots of blackberry jam.  My favorite was the blackberry jelly.  Fewer seeds.  But Mom didn't make that as much.  It may be the overdosing, or it may be the fact that I shed my blood getting them, but blackberries, while great, aren't my favorite. 

Pretty much everybody in BC knows blackberries.  Blackberries grow wild.  In proliferation. Actually, what everybody probably knows as blackberries, aren't the native species.  There are at least five species of blackberry, that I know of, in BC.  There are the native, wild blackberries, with their small sweet berries, and I know of one rather odd species that has really jagged pointed leaves.  But the ones that grow along the highways and byways, and in every patch of bare ground that you do not cultivate and assiduously weed, are, I suspect, Himalayan blackberries.  They are an invasive species.  They are prolific, and productive, and even delicious, but they aren't native.

My favorites are raspberries.  Partly because they are available for such a short time.  Or, rather, they were.  One of the definite benefits of globalization is the greater availability of raspberries for a longer period of time, as we get them from other places in the world where they are in season.

But I definitely love salmonberries.  You can almost never get them.  For one thing, they're shy.  Salmonberry bushes grow in the midst of other bushes.  They sort of hide themselves.  You have to know what you're looking for.  The smaller, but slightly blackberry shaped leaves, are one indication, as are the red stems and twigs.  But the definite giveaway are the bright yellow berries as they are developing.  Before they get ripe.  Look for those yellow berries, and you know what to look for a bit later on as the berries start to ripen.  You can eat them (and, given the contention with squirrels and birds, possibly should eat them) as they start to turn red.  They are delicious at that point, but if you can wait, if you can protect them, if you can find some other berries buried deep in the cover of other bushes, when they are fully dark red, that is when they are at their best.