Wild Berries of Westchester: A Forager’s Summer Guide
- Eric Stone
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
When I think summer, one of the first things that comes to my mind is fresh fruit. While there are lots of delicious and local fruits available at local farmers markets and farm stands, the real taste of the season comes from the roadsides, the abandoned lots, and your own back yard.
I’m talking about wild fruits which thrive in our little corner of the Hudson Valley! If you know where to look, and what to look for, you can spend the entire summer eating delicious berries without spending a dime.
As we teach all our students at The Rewilding School, especially those in this summer’s Hunter Gather class in Croton and Mt. Kisco, it is important to consider the six rights of foraging before you go out:
1. Right Place – Make sure you have permission to harvest from the place, before you go out. Many sanctuaries and parks explicitly prohibit foraging. It’s disrespectful for foragers to disregard the established guidance, especially because they are the ones responsible for maintaining the site for all of our benefit. When folks harvest from prohibited areas, it can damage sensitive ecosystems and cause a location to permanently close down access to the public.
Another “Right Place” consideration is to ensure the site you harvest from is safe from contaminants such as industrial waste, sewage, herbicides, and heavy metals. Plants and mushrooms can contain these contaminants in their tissues.
2. Right Plant – Make sure you identify the correct species of plant. All plants have key identifying features that must be noticed before a positive ID can be established. Incorrect ID can lead to eating the wrong plant, and may result in illness or worse. Be aware of any “look alike” plants that may share some features with your target plant.
3. Right Part – Many plants have parts that are edible and parts that are inedible or even poisonous. Make sure the plant part you intend to eat is, in fact, edible
4. Right Season – Many plants have specific seasons in which they are edible. In general , spring is when roots, young shoots, and leaves are edible, summer is for berries, and fall is for larger fruits and nuts.
5. Right Preparation- Some foods are only safe to eat after additional preparation, such as leaching or cooking. Make sure you are able to prepare your foraged harvest properly, and plan ahead any processing or cooking equipment that may be required.
6. Right Ethics – Many native plants have become locally endangered due to over harvest and inappropriate management. This is especially true in heavily impacted areas like Westchester County where suburban sprawl, high deer populations, and invasive plant species dominate the landscape. A good general rule is to only harvest 20% of what you find and don’t pick anything from small patches. This allows wildlife to find their food, to. (Be aware that this rule does NOT apply for invasive species that are heavily outcompeting our native plants – if you see a very large monoculture patch of an invasive plant, have at it!)
One more “Right Ethics” is for foragers to learn how to support our local wild food patches, with landowner permission. If invasive vines such as bittersweet or porcelain berry are climbing or covering an area, remove them. If mugwort or garlic mustard is coming in, pull it. If blackberry patches are getting shaded out, consider clearing or cutting the area to open it up again.
Foragers are a critical part of making sure our wild foods keep on growing and thriving on these lands.
The Fruits of Summer
Mulberries
Our Summer starts off strong with edible harvests of both our native Red Mulberry (Morus rubra) and the non-native White Mulberry (Morus alba). These trees both fruit around the last week of June to the first week of July, resulting in them hybridizing in the wild. Fruits from the more common White Mulberry may be white or reddish/purple, and are ripe when the fruit are soft and easily shaken from a branch. Leaves for both Red and White Mulberry can be quite variable and are most easily identified by the fruit bunches – they look similar to a raspberry or blackberry, but grown on a thornless tree instead of a thorny cane.
Make sure to only harvest berries that are on the tree, and to wash berries thoroughly before eating. When these trees ripen, they are a popular spot for all manner of wildlife who may fully or partially eat some fruits, and possibly leave some droppings nearby. Harvesting fallen fruits from the ground is not recommended.
Wineberries
Coming up next is a community favorite: wineberries. Ripening in the first two weeks of July in Northern Westchester, the non-native invasive wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) is probably one of the most popular foraged berries. With plump berries that turn from orange to a deep ruby red when ripe, it is easy to identify. Wineberries are wildly common, easily found in brushy areas left un-mowed. They are thorny and covered with reddish hairs. With white undersides to the leaves, they are very different than any other local berries and far more prolific.
You can help our local wild areas by eating as many of these berries as possible! Wineberries are an invasive plant that easily outcompete our native berries. The more berries we eat, the more we prevent wildlife from unintentionally spreading their seeds.
Wineberries do not store well, so it’s best to eat fresh or process right away into jams or jellies.
Serviceberry/June Berry
Serviceberries (Amelanchier spp.) are a sleeper when it comes to local fruit. Growing on shorter trees, the fruiting season is very brief, usually only a week or two. You can tell the fruit is ripe by the absolute mobs of birds that swarm the trees. Usually this happens around the end of June into July.
Most local serviceberries are planted by people. With high deer populations, young trees have trouble growing tall enough to not get eaten without fencing. You can encourage this amazing resource for birds and people by planting it in your yard, with fencing for deer protection until the shrub reaches about 6 feet tall.
Blueberries
Blueberries are the quintessential food of the Northeast, and one of the berries you can gather in true abundance. Ripening throughout July depending on local genetics and elevation, there are two species of Blueberries to look out for:
Highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corybosum) grows in wet areas and produces larger sweet berries. These are less common in our region but a treat to find!
Lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) is common in large patches in upland areas, especially where there is shallow soils under chestnut oaks. The berries are smaller than Highbush but you quickly forget that when you hit a big patch and are able to gather a lot at once.
Wild blueberries are much more flavorful than grocery store varieties and are one of my personal favorites for freezing or canning into preserves.
You can help protect wild blue berries by being a little rough with them. Breaking ends of branches as you harvest encourages bushy growth and can lead to better production the following year.
Blackberries
Blackberries may not be as common as wineberries but the varieties available locally are treasures. Around here you will mainly find Common Blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis), but there are local records of non-native and rarer native ones too. All local blackberries ripen from late July into early August.
Blackberries grow only on second-year stalks, which means they need regular pruning to fruit. This can be done via mowing, manual cutting, or fire (much less common). Wild blackberries have heavy sharp thorns, so harvesting these treasures should be directed more towards older kids and adults who can have more body awareness and care with their movements.
When harvesting, look for plump, heavy berries. Shriveled or hard berries should be left alone. Plucking blackberries is not as easy as raspberries, because blackberries contain a solid core that may require a bit of wiggling or effort to remove from the branch.
You can encourage blackberries by gloving up and removing plants that are competing with them. They need a lot of sunlight and are easily pushed around by invasive plants like wineberry or multiflora rose.
Wild Grape
Grapes (Vitus spp.) come from vines, but finding local wild grapes is like stumbling across manna from heaven. From late August through early September, if you are walking through the woods and you suddenly get a whiff of an overwhelming smell of Welch’s grape juice, you are probably not imagining it. You’ve hit the motherload.
Wild grapes grow on vines with flakey brown bark. The fruits mature from green to dark purple and have big seeds in them. There are no wild seedless varieties. While fruits may be up high, often a break in the canopy or forest edge will allow vines to grow in picking range (if you are tall enough!)
Grapes are a favorite of local wildlife with everyone from coyotes to box turtles following their nose to the bounty.
Grapes are best prepared for jelly or eaten fresh. Eating seeded grapes takes some practice and involves less chewing and more squishing in the mouth and then discarding the seeds back into the woods.
Grapes are threatened by their invasive look-alike porcelain berry, which covers landscapes and chokes out anything in its path, along with well-meaning land managers who cut mature grape vines along with invasive ones. You can help grapes and the wildlife that eat them by learning to identify both wild grape and porcelain berry and removing porcelain berry whenever you see it (with landowner permission.)
Autumn Berry
Autumnberry (Elaeagnus umbellate), also called Autumn Olive, is one of our most abundant fruits. Growing in abandoned agricultural fields, this small tree/large bush has a silver underside to the oval leaves that shimmers under water. The berries are small, red, and round with a silvery speckling on the surface. They grow in such quantity that it weighs down the branches.
Ripening from Late August into September, Autumnberry is best harvested with a big bucket and a hand that slide along the branch, stripping it of leaves and berries alike.
Unfortunately, Autumnberry is highly invasive… but fortunately that means you should not be concerns about over harvesting or damaging this tree. Have at it, do your worst, and get your yummies!
The fruit is astringent and tart when ripe. The best preparation I’ve found is to separate the pits and pulp using a food mill, then mixing the pulp with sugar, and dehydrating this mixture it into fruit leather. It’s the best fruit leather I’ve ever had, especially as a kid who grew up with fruit by the foot (except this kind is packed with antioxidants and flavor!)
All these berries make summer super special in Westchester and the Lower Hudson Valley. If your child is interested in joining The Rewilding School for some wild foods, nature skills, or fantasy adventures, we still have camp space available for kids entering grades 1-6 in both our Mount Kisco and Croton Point Park Wild Summer locations.
Happy foraging!
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