Tuesday, August 16, 2016

One out of three

I drove 40 kilometres to wipe the wax off a berry.

Sticky currant, Ribes viscosissimum. UPDATE Red-flowered currant, Ribes sanguineum

I had found several of these shrubs at Oyster Bay, and they looked like currants or gooseberries to me, even if they were the "wrong" colour, and had no spines. I came home and looked them up; the only currant without spines was the Sticky. But the berries are a deep bluish-black.

Not black, even in the shade. Black specks all over, but that's all.

I looked at all the small berries in my guide and on E-Flora, and kept coming back to the stickies. But the colour was still wrong. I had been mistaken about another plant from here, (more about that later) so I wanted to be more careful this time.

Pale blue berry. With black hairs.

Then I read in PNWWildflowers that the fruits are covered in a bluish wax. So I drove back to Oyster Bay and wiped the wax off a berry. And, sho 'nuff, they're bluish black underneath.

Next question; what do they taste like? I tried one. It was mildly sweet, a bit seedy. Palatable, but nothing to drive 40 km. for.

Then I looked at my guide. "Not edible," it says. Wikipedia goes further:

The fruit is a blue-black berry a centimeter (0.4 inch) long or longer. It is said to cause violent vomiting shortly after ingestion.

I ate another berry today. I'm still fine.

Red-flowered currant leaf. 

The leaves of the stickies are supposed to have a chemical odour on hot days. I pinched one, and smelled nothing more than green and drying leaf, but this was in the cool of the late afternoon.

The map is never the terrain.

Update: I've been sent to look at the red-flowered currant, and it turns out that it is also unarmed (no spines), has the same waxy, polka-dot berries, and is more suited to this terrain. Wikipedia has photos of the berries, and they're strongly purplish blue, but on E-Flora, they're waxy and pale. So red-flowered it is.

The red-flowered currant is supposed to be unpalatable, according to my guide, but a friend on Facebook just made jam with them, blackberries and Oregon grape berries, using, as she says, a lot of sugar.

And here's the map, again.



3 comments:

  1. You go to all lengths to get your pictures and identifications. - Margy

    ReplyDelete
  2. I used to use the somewhat dangerous mental shortcut that blue berries were edible. I might need to revise that shortcut, but not today, because you survived!

    ReplyDelete
  3. My mental shortcut is that tiny amounts shouldn't make me too sick. Probably needs revision, too.

    ReplyDelete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

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