The evergreen huckleberry (Image: WSU)

Every year, it’s harder and harder for me to feel excited about the Fourth of July. The waste, noise, and pollution is the most ridiculous way to celebrate a very dubious heritage (though I’ll admit having fun with friends and family outside is an exceptionally good way to spend a day). However, not only does the Fourth mark the end of Juneuary in my personal calendar, it also marks the beginning of berry season. The Pacific Northwest cup overfloweth with native berries to enjoy and that’s something to celebrate.

First, I will include the “Um, actually” part of this love letter to wild fruit. Not everything we call a berry is actually a berry in the botanical sense, even if from a culinary perspective we do. Botanists call any fruit grown from the ovary of a single flower a berry. They are mostly fleshy except for their seeds, which are inside the fruit. Blueberries are well named, while strawberries are not technically berries (though watermelons and tomatoes are). From the perspective of someone eating fruit, it really doesn’t matter that much, but several of the berries on my list below are not considered berries by botanists. But they also spend their days peering at the sexual parts of plants, so we can nod our heads and carry on enjoying these juicy capsules of sunshine. (Um, actually, if you like flowers, you too are a plant pervert.)

You might appreciate Himalayan Blackberries overtaking an unkempt corner or grow blueberries in a planter on your deck but we have many lovely native plants that bear lovely treats and have deeper roles to play in local ecosystems. These fruits have always been staples of the diet of the first people of the Hill and all across the Pacific Northwest. With plants as common as Salal and Trailing Blackberry, we can appreciate native plants and their connections to people and the more than human world. That’s what I think about when I consider the very muddled legacy of being an American – that we need to embrace the true heritage of the places many of us are at best guests.

But instead of being exacting and serious about the environment, genocide, and more, I am instead going to rank some native berries according to nothing but my personal opinions. I might as well be ranking 1996 hip hop albums releases, because I expect strong opinions and an overwhelmingly difficult time choosing the number one spot (just in case you were wondering, right now it’s Redman – Muddy Waters). And just like music, I am going to leave some options off the list because, well, they’re hardly palatable. The only requirement is that these “berries” need to have, at one point, grown on the Hill, and now find their way into our native gardens and restoration plans instead of maybe growing wild.

Osoberry (Image: Burke Herbarium Image Collection)

10. Osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) – Leave ’em for the birds; too bitter for me to love them. Not only are they not actually berries, but drupes with a little pit containing the seed (true plums are also drupes). I’d rather eat their leaves, which taste a bit like cucumbers. And besides, as one of the first fruits to ripen, they get gobbled by the birds almost immediately and are already gone.

Continue reading →

Jseattle gets around on iNaturalist

I will forever argue that finding people to learn with will always be better than learning only on your own. My recent escapades as a lifelong learner have had me diving deep into diverse topics like wooden spoon carving and contributing to the Washington Bee Atlas, where I started out “on my own.” Many people raised in the United State might have been subliminally led to believe that being “self-taught” is something to be deeply proud of. Certainly it can be. But this bootstrapping is just another way of saying you put in a lot of lonely hours into something. I took leaps and bounds in both these nerdy pursuits when I finally met some folks IRL – plus it was way more fun.

That being said, you don’t always have a bee expert at your side and we live in a brave new world of naturalist resources, often on our phones. With summer approaching, some of us spend more time outside and might even have some extra free time to ogle flora and fauna. It might seem ironic that in the days of disconnection from nature and an alarming decline of biodiversity worldwide, that we have more natural history apps than ever. But really it is because of this drifting away that people have developed said resources – we might need to get away from our phones more but we also might as well use them for good.

I might be willing to lug about a textbook called “The Solitary Bees,” but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your pocket computer has so much to offer and much of it is free. Here are three apps we should all have, that will make your summer more interesting, and might tell you what plants, bugs, and birds are about while sunning yourself at Cal Anderson. Continue reading →