No blogging yesterday because it was a beautiful Midwestern summer day, so I spent hours hiking, then had tomatoes to tie up in the garden and other chores.
About two hours into the walk I encountered a patch of dozens and dozens of the plants above. I believe these are blackberries rather than black raspberries, but to the hiker the important part is that they are highly nutritious and exquisitely delicious. My personal ethos in this regard is to tell myself I'm walking in the animals' kitchen and have plenty of food in my own home, so I should just enjoy a handful (spitting out the little seeds as I walk to help propagate the plants) and leave the others (although in all honesty they will probably be harvested by subsequent dayhikers rather than the local critters).
Ehh, I don't know if spiting out the seeds would actually do anything - usually birds or some other animal eats them and the seeds get a sort of... natural distribution from the other end, as it were. A little bit of starter fertilizer.
ReplyDeleteDark berries and lean meat...thats what we started with lo those millions of years ago.
ReplyDeleteI believe those are a variety of Himalayan blackberry. If so, yes they are delicious. They're also an invasive species. So pick all you want.
ReplyDeletehttp://lakewhatcom.wsu.edu/gardenkit/unwantedpests/Blackberry.htm
I'm in Wisconsin, and the Himalayan one isn't a problem here - "Himalayan blackberry has become naturalized in the Pacific Northwest from California north into British Columbia and along the middle sections of the east coast from Delaware to Virginia."
ReplyDeleteBeing Midwesteners, we have only well-behaved blackberries, unlike those vicious ones described in your link.