First Wineberries

Our new apartment, which we moved into last month and finished unpacking last week, is located right next to a major river in the area. It holds some really nice fish, and I am eager to explore it with rod and reel once the fishing picks up in the Fall. 

Apparently, it's also loaded with berries. We came across them accidentally on a simple sightseeing visit. Plant ID is not my strong point, and I had never this particular berry before, so I wasn't immediately sure what it was. Its leaves resembled plants in the rubus genus--blackberry and raspberry--but its berries had a weird sticky residue that made my instincts scream poison! So, naturally, I took a little nibble. Tasted like a raspberry, only stickier. Still, my instincts were not happy with the sticky residue.

When I got back to the house, I looked it up in my plant reference book, starting with the Rubus section. I came across a picture of a plant--called a Wineberry--resembling the one I had just discovered. The book noted there are no dangerous look-a-likes, and a couple of the key features it identified--large sticky calx, for example--were enough to convince me I had the right plant. 

My reference book said the plants like disturbed areas, field edges, and river banks. This being a dried river bank and a disturbed area were more clues that I had the right plant.

So, of course, I returned and picked a jarful. We ended up mixing it with some raspberries and making a jam. It is delicious and the seeds in the Wineberry give the jam a nice, wholesome look. For the jam, we cut the recommended sugar in half. We also used our breadmaker, which has a jam-making feature. It was quick, easy, and tasty. 

Mashing the berries with a fork.

The bread/jam machine. Pour it in, turn it on, and come back to some nice jam in about 2 hours.

The finished pint of jam. From about 2 cups of berries.

Also found this odd purple-flowered raspberry. Not really knowing what it was, I googled purple-flowered raspberry and turns out it is the aptly named "purple-flowered raspberry." Not quite as tasty as the standard raspberry.