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| Serviceberries, aka saskatoons, aka chuckley pear, aka western juneberry, pigeon berry, etc. Amelanchier alnifolia. |
The ripe berries are a dark, almost black, blue/purple. Edible, sometimes delicious. It seems to depend on the particular shrub; some are just sweetish, some are worth returning to the same location, however distant, just to collect another batch. I don't know if the difference in taste depends on soil chemistry or the particular variety of serviceberry. BC has four intergrading varieties. I had a bush at my house in Bella Coola; the berries were just "meh". I stopped at a campsite south of Barkerville, and the berries were so good I picked a gallon to take home.
This shrub was beside the shore at Royston. The berries will be ripe soon. Inland, they ripen later in the summer.
Serviceberries are in the rose family. The scientific name, alnifolia, means "alder leaf".
How interesting, we have Saskatoons at our summer home southwest of Tatla Lake and they're delicious, all of them in the area seem to be. The Cedar waxwings thought so too last year! A large bush near us here in Portland is just "meh" and the birds don't touch it. Another neighbor has one and she said "they're awful".
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it's the really cold winters that makes the difference.
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