No series on wild food would be complete without the humble blackberry and there can’t be many people who haven’t picked and eaten them at one time or another. Parents who are wary (or unaware) of almost all other forms of wild food will happily send their kids out blackberrying – at least that used to be true a generation ago. The bushes have a happy knack for brightening up some otherwise dull and wild-food-less places and even in urban areas or the most intensively-managed farmland a short walk is likely to pass by a bush or two.
They have a long season. The pioneers ripen as early as June in some years and berries can be found well into the early winter in mild conditions, though the taste does tend to deteriorate as moulds and increasingly hard-pressed wildlife take their toll. It’s not just insects, birds and small mammals that relish them. I once watched a Roe Deer working along a hedgerow, pausing often to delicately select and remove the ripest berries from the ends of the shoots. It looked almost as if it could make use of an empty ice-cream container.
A bit like exotically-coloured but commonplace garden birds, you suspect our appreciation for blackberries has been dulled by their ubiquity. The human brain seems to relish a challenge and something that is ridiculously easy to find quickly becomes less appreciated, however good it looks – or tastes. Which is a shame but, I guess, unavoidable.
If they have a drawback it’s that they don’t keep well unless frozen. So, whilst they can be added to cereal to brighten up the first meal of the day you have to go out and pick them that morning – or perhaps the day before. They also make a good addition to ice-cream, and crumble is hard to beat on a cold winter evening if you’ve taken the trouble to freeze some from the previous autumn (and know someone who can make it).
It turns out that the blackberry is actually a bewildering variety of hundreds of different microspecies. Keen botanists can apparently sometimes work out the county of origin if provided with a sample from a plant. If anyone cares to hazard a guess from the photo I’d certainly be impressed with anything close to a correct answer.
Previous ‘Wild food’ posts by Ian Carter:
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And before the berries appear the blossoms are much appreciated by a variety of insects!
Can’t beat them, especially mixed with apple or pear in a crumble flavoured with a teaspoon of cinnamon. We collect and freeze several kilos from the same coastal site every September. It’s well away from busy roads and sprayed fields.
fill a kilner-type jar with them, add a little sugar and some cheap blended scotch – leave in the dark, sealed for 3 months – the result is an amazing liquer.
Sadly, round here [Moffat]
we are among the very few who pick them….a dying tradition, which is ridiculous when its out there, delicious and free….
I like the idea of Puffin, with a Blackberry and Hazelnut stuffing, and a couple of Penny Buns.