Afraid not. I lost my job recently and as a result I’m in the middle of a move across country. Unfortunately, I may not have a chance to taste those wonderful thimbleberries again 
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And make sure your field guide is written by a reputable and knowledgeable person, and not AI (as is the case with some foraging books out there)
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No worries, abundance of deer isn’t gonna be solved anytime soon so they will continue to be “invasive” which is what i want because they protect other plants that deer do eat.
I see, so what do they taste like then?
And did you save any seeds? It’s a species I wanted to domesicate too!
Yo… Where did you find them? I’d love to try some wild muscadine grapes, could you save some seeds?
dang… I hope you find another job.
They’re very common in forests throughout the eastern US. And there are seeds available online for pretty cheap
Strawberry tree is also commonly available, although whether it will grow in Professor Porcupine’s climate is a different question. It is a mediterranean species. Oh, and don’t get it confused with strawberry bush. That one isn’t edible.
Asking me what they taste like? If you met someone who had never tasted an apple, what would you tell them it tastes like?
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Invasive! Be careful over your garden, you never know when the pretty patch of huge and delicious berries is going to go all wineberry on you and take over your garden and surroundings.
It is difficult to describe fruit flavors because each is different. Strawberry tree fruits are in the sweet rather than the tart category. But the reason that they were never a favorite is because of their texture: they are chewy, more like a “fruit snack” than a real fruit. That is not a texture I like in fruits. After a few tries, I didn’t bother anymore.
I should point out that strawberry tree is not a wild tree in California where I knew it. They are planted as ornamentals; I never saw one in a wild state. But in context, I suppose that by “domesticate” you meant select for improved fruit?
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How does it taste? Could you save some seeds? I’d love to grow it!
Wil apricot starts sweets, and it’s juicy, which is especially nice as it grows in a hot habitat that has water via small mountain streams. However, after chewing for a little time it becomes very very tangy, and it’s best to have another one ready and to guess when the flavour changes, so you can start a new one.
Sadly I no longer live where they grow, so seeds are an impossibility.
As for Arbutus unedo, it’s quite common in it’s native range, and the leaves are distinctive, so you can save the location in your brain to return for fruiting time. As for flavour, I would say generic sweet, and I like the texture, it’s jsut pleasant to find something so colourful and tasty out and about.
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Yea… I couldn’t find a single one where I live & I’m in Maryland.
The only Muscadine grapes I found were from the grocery store of which I saved seeds.
How different are the wild ones form the grocery store ones?
For now my climate is irrelevant as I will move. For being commonly available I can’t find any at the grocery store or as a tree planted for landscaping in my area.
ooh good question, Depends on the Apple, they range from Crisp, sour to sweet. If Apples are bletted, they can taste tropical like cinnamon, caramel or apple sauce (Sometimes even like Bananna). They kind of taste like Pears.
Yea… that’s kind of the point, I want Wineberries to spread so that there’s more food to forage for! I want to improve wineberry by crossing it with Black Raspberry to get Different colors & flavors that can thrive/fruit in shade. Very few Rubus spp. are able to fruit in shade making Wineberry Awesome!
I want Wineberry, Black raspberry, Pawpaws, Persimmons, Mulberries, Spicebush, Sassafrass to all become “Invasvie”, we need more of them!
wow! I love sweet fruits so as a sugar addict who hates tart, these sound wonderful!
Also fruit snack chewy!? WHOA! That’s awesome, shi… makes me want to get seeds & grow them.
yes exactly, improve the fruit flavor, yield, ease of harvest, size, ect but also improve it’s adaptability to local conditions, like improving hardiness, thiving on clay soils even when wet, no pesticides required so it can fend for itself.
Essentially I want to create a landrace/hybrid swarm, letting everything cross till something adapts/does well in my local conditions.
Nice, now I wonder how sweet could it be bred?
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I’ve never had cultivated ones (never seen them in grocery stores) but I’d assume they have thinner skins and smaller seeds (small drawback of wild ones, skin and seeds are basically inedible). There are inat observations for muscadine all over eastern Maryland, they fruit in late summer (although the fruits are often high in trees and it can sometimes be hard to get to the fallen ones before birds do)
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Noooooo!!!
There are SO many invasives already wrecking the ecosystem! There are plenty of perfectly amazing plants that don’t need changing and purposeful invasiving! One thing is the garden, this is a whole nother ball game!
I beg you, please, please don’t help wineberry, or any other invasives. It’s bad enough as it is.
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Maybe I can ask Innaturalist observers in Eastern Maryland, I just never visit Eastern Maryland, actually I don’t recall I time I ever did.
What’s interesting about Muscadine Grapes is unlike the other types, Muscadine seeds are bitter & taste nasty but the flesh taste soo good. When I eat the other wild grapes (Vitis vulpina), the only part I actually enjoy about the fruit is the seeds, they add a nice pleasant crunch. If it weren’t for the delicious seeds I would never bother with the fruit.
You mean Pioneer species right? I think they are simply Nature’s solution to solving the dis balance we’ve created.
Why? Wineberries taste so good & the birds often don’t leave me enough so my ecosystem desperately needs more of them. Whenever I eat them I always spit out seeds in areas where they can grow.
I sure as heck do absolutely not.
Seriously, have you not been to Planet Earth???
Invasive species are everywhere and we DO NOT need more of them. They are the “disbalance we’ve created”.
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I accept we have a difference in opinion.
What actually is an invasive species?What’s the difference between an Invasive species & a Pioneer species? Don’t they both fill the same ecological role? Restoring degraded soils therefore ecosystems?
What’s the difference between a “Weed” & an “Invasive Species”?
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You’re very much conflating a number of different things that shouldn’t be conflated. A pioneer species is the first organism to colonize a barren environment (e.g. after a fire or a flood that wipes everything out). Pioneer species are not necessarily invasive. For example in montane riparian habitats in the US, the first plants to colonize a newly formed floodplain after a river shifts course are typically cottonwoods. These are native trees. They stabilize the soil and allow other plant species to gain a foothold (typically willows and alders first, then eventually pines and other conifers), which increases biodiversity in that habitat. An invasive species is one that is not native to a region and that crowds out the native species by consuming all the resources the native species need to grow. They have the effect of decreasing the biodiversity of an area. In that sense they are very nearly opposites. As for weeds, that’s something of an arbitrary term for any undesirable plant in a cultivated space. Not really an applicable term in a natural ecosystem.
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So what makes them any different from “Invasive species”? Elaeagnus angustifolia & Elaeagnus umbellata both do the same thing, fixing the soils to allow other species to grow but oddly get labeled “Invasive”, I don’t understand why the inconsistency.
But to which species is it invasive too? Are Homo sapiens invasive or not?
For example Lindera benzoin in my local forrests are among the only shrub in the understory, is it invasive or not? What about the deer that eat everything else excepet spicebush because it taste spicy?
So why aren’t invasive species also not applicable term in natural ecosystems?
There is no weed in nature just like they’re truly is no “Invasive species” in nature either.
A weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place, the same thing with an “Invasive species” if you get what I’m saying.
What does "Native’ mean?
“Weed” is typically applied to plants just because humans think they’re ugly. “Invasive” refers to non-native species which have proliferated to the point where they cause real ecological damage, sometimes including extinctions. For example, the sooty crawfish (Pacifastacus nigrescens) is thought to have gone extinct due to the introduction of the signal crawfish (P. leniusculus) into its habitat. On the subject of crawfish, invasive North American species have decimated Europe’s native species due to the introduction of diseases, and even within the US species such as Faxonius virilis and F. rusticus have been introduced outside their native ranges, causing significant declines in native species. One of many examples of how invasive species can cause harm
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You’ve been replied to this already but I must emphatically claim that this claim is wrong.
An invasive species is a species that has been taken out of its natural range by humans to another place, where it doesn’t belong to, and it breeds and starts modifying the colonized ecosystem, usually negatively.
A pioneer species has totally nothing to do with an invasive species. A pioneer is a species of plant that starts colonizing a previously disturbed area. It is part of vegetation cover regeneration.
I already told you, an invasive species is a non-native species that decreases the overall biodiversity of an ecosystem. They may be native in another region (for example Italian thistles are native plants in the Mediterranean, but invasive in California). It’s not a matter of a specific species being labeled, its a matter of the effect it has in the ecosystem. Native species are integrated into the ecological web of their respective regions. They do not crowd out other species and they have an ecological function that other species rely on to flourish. In the simplest analogy I can think of, a native species plays nice with its neighbors on the playground. An invasive species takes the ball away.
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We’ve all told him, but he’s stubborn!