A trail walk these days will probably bring you to at least one appealing display of summertime berries, whether it be blueberries, red raspberry, black caps, or thimbleberries.
The profusion of spring-time blossoms, plus the work of millions of pollinators, has now resulted in a crop of delicious fruits.
While members of the raspberry clan are fairly easily to recognize, do take care that the “blue berry” you are eying is actually a blueberry; a couple of our wildflowers — blue bead lily and blue cohosh — also have blue-coloured fruits but are best not included within your diet. The true blueberry is a shrub and is usually found growing on the sunny rock lands of Muskoka.
Now that I’m on the topic of edible wild, I have to insert my grumpy anti-foraging message. Admittedly, I love a sweet trailside nibble as much as the next hiker — a couple red raspberries or a cupped handful of blueberries adds a lot to the memory of a wonderful outdoors experience. But nowadays there has to be an awareness of the potential negative impacts of “browse as you go.”
For several decades I have lived by the golden rule of berry picking: take only a third, leaving the remaining berries for wildlife use, and for reproduction of the plant. I recently had my eyes opened to the reality of foraging in these modern times.
For starters, you are not alone on the trail ... there may be dozens, even hundreds, of other trail walkers toddling by here in a week. I take a third of what I find, Mary takes a third of what’s left, Robert takes a third (hmm, he thinks, must be a poor year for berries), Rebecca takes a third (well, actually it’s hard to take a third of a single berry).
I recently attended a terrific lecture about foraging where the speaker explained the falsehood of ‘pick only a third.’ Apparently nature has this interesting balance between available fruit and fruit needed to reproduce itself. If 100 berries are produced, at least 80 will not be viable or will not land somewhere to germinate. Some of these will be eaten naturally by bears, birds and other critters.
Wildlife can’t count so will devour all that they can find or get at; leaving a few fruits that, hopefully, one or two will be able to successfully send forth good seeds. And then we come along looking for something to add to our GORP or energy bar.
We all meant well, but with the increased use of all trail systems, our collective sweet tooth desires have severely limited the reproduction of some plant species. But wait ... there’s more!
These berries are the main course for many, many wildlife species, from birds to mammals to insects. As rampant development of the landscape has turned forests into estate lots, the wildlife which once lived there have been displaced and have moved to the few remaining protected areas in the neighbourhood: parks.
Parks are where the walking trails are. Walking trails are where the people go. The few patches of raspberries that grew there are now supposed to support the original population of wildlife, the newly arriving displaced critters, and sate the palette of hungry hikers.
Who has the option of obtaining such fruits from other sources? We do. Yes, a basket of blueberries costs as much as I made working in a whole day in my youth. No, the enriched experience of foraging in the wild is lost while you wait in the checkout lane. But we humans have that option whereas the bears, raccoons, song sparrows, deer, robins, wood thrushes, chipping sparrows, and their like, do not.
Adding to the pressure of ‘wild harvesting’ is the popular resurrected notion of living off the land. While there is nothing wrong with learning to be a whole lot more resourceful at looking after yourself, the land space available to do so is very limited.
All parks have a legal restriction about harvesting within their property lines. Most nature reserves and conservation areas also have a “do not pick” guideline.
Crown land is available for foraging, but that designation is quite rare to find south of Georgian Bay. Private lands require the permission to trespass from the land owner. Which comes full circle back to the only really available lands are where the trails are, in parks.
If I should happen to see you sneaking a trailside nibble, I won’t think badly of you (because I may well be doing the same thing). However, please don’t create a situation where you are found loading up buckets of wild berries.
In southern Ontario, we have to switch our expectations of a good berry harvest consisting of a basket of horticulturally grown fruits, on sale.