Saskatoon Circle Report

Gathering to share the time honored traditions of all human ancestors, primitive skill experts and enthusiasts came together this week to celebrate foods, crafts, and skills that are intimately imbedded in a variety of earthen landscapes. The Methow Valley on the eastern flank of the North Cascades was our meeting place, and when the air wasn’t thick with the smoke of nearby wildfires, the warm vanilla aroma of Ponderosa Pine wafted through our peaceful camp.

I was invited to the conference to lead ethnobotanical walks (as a second rate substitute for Nancy Turner) and shared what I could of a valley that was brimming with food plants. On the drier west facing slopes we plucked a few remaining Saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia) that were dried on the bush, dug under the withered leaves of Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) to expose its resin scented anchor, and plucked the plump hips of Rose (Rosa spp.). A seep on the east facing slope gave rise to a lone Blue Elderberry (Sambucus cerulea) and abundantly fruiting Chokecherries (Prunus virginiana). Finally, the Ponderosa Pine and Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) in the valley bottom gave me a chance to talk about the many forms of edible cambium in the Pacific Northwest. From what I hear, the area is brimming with Bitterroots (Lewisia rediviva), Biscuitroots (Lomatium spp.), Mountain Potatoes (Claytonia lanceolata), and Yellow Bells (Fritillaria pudica) in the spring, but all lay dormant under the cool soil to avoid the scorching late summer heat.

When I wasn’t babbling about botanicals, I did my best to take advantage of the wonderful workshops hosted by the other instructors. I brought a Yew (Taxus brevifolia) wood bow that I have been working on for a while and eagerly received instruction on how to complete it from bow making master Jose. Benjamin taught me how to bark tan fish skin. I occasionally looked over the shoulder of Jill as he scraped the membrane off of deer hides.

There were far too many activities to take in over the course of a single week. Workshops included several types of basket weaving, felting, back-strap loom weaving, flint knapping, animal processing, friction fire making, shelter making, gourd bowl making, and leather working, as well as pottery, archery, and many more.

Lynx shared a short movie about her Stone Age Project in which she takes a small group of people out into the wilderness for three weeks without metal, plastic, or anything else that they haven’t made or harvested themselves from the wild. I have found that many folks that teach primitive skills lack much knowledge of edibles, but Lynx really impressed me with her knowledge and regular use of wild plant foods. I similarly found kindred spirits in the organizers, Cameron and Eric. With luck I will get to join them all next year to harvest spring roots and the mid-summer Saskatoons.

For me, the high points of the Saskatoon Circle came every evening when the light faded and cool temperatures brought us, with outstretched palms to the central campfire. Personalities ranged from the deeply rooted to the radically nomadic, but we all embraced impassioned conversation on sustainable living and outdoor adventure.

Though I was called away early (to another conference of a similar ilk) I look forward to next year’s gathering and staying in touch with my new circle of Saskatoon friends.

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Kousa Dogwood, another urban wonder

Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa)

Himalayan Dogwood (Cornus capitata)

The fun thing about urban foraging is that you have a chance to find plants from all over the world. Recently when I was walking through my neighborhood I spotted a dogwood with huge bright red fruit that reminded me of a tree that I saw 9 years ago in the Himalayan foothills of Central Nepal.  I was just starting a year of ethnobotanical work with Langtang National Park and went for a hike on a trail that led out of the village and up into the mountains. I came across two 10^th grade boys walking down the trail carrying sacks of wheat. We got to chatting and I followed them to the water powered stone mill and watched them as they ground their wheat into flour. Afterwards we started talking about plants—at least as much as my rudimentary understanding of Nepali would allow—and I asked them about the large fruits that were scattered along the trail. They said they were called gulna (Cornus capitata) and that they could be eaten fresh, but I shouldn’t eat the ones that had fallen on the ground, which was too bad because there weren’t any left on the tree.

Heavy fruit production on this Kousa Dogwood

Ever since then I have always wondered what those Himalayan Dogwood fruits taste like. The fruits before me looked virtually identical, but after some botanical sleuthing, I determined that they were Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa), which are deciduous whereas those on Himalayan Dogwood are evergreen. Kousa Dogwood is native to China, Korea, and Japan. The fruit looks something like a strawberry, a pink soccer ball on a stick, or a sea urchin skeleton. Kousa Dogwood fruit is made up of 20-40 pinkish-orangish red fleshy carpels that are all fused together in a spherical arrangement atop a 3-4 inch long stem.

Nice ripe Kousa Dogwood fruit

Throughout their native range, Kousa Dogwood fruit are eaten fresh or fermented to make wine. The landowner allowed me to sample a few and I found that they have a soft creamy texture and sweet flavor similar to papaya. However, the skins are slightly coarse and mildly bitter, so I have learned to break them open and suck out the pulp.

A few minutes picking

Yesterday, Katrina and I picked a couple quarts of Kousa Dogwood to experiment more with and I learned that unripe fruit tend to have more orange colored skin, have pulp that is white and firm instead of orange and soft, and most notably, lack the sweet flavor of ripe fruit. A few fruits had hard seeds that are about the size of a Chokecherry pit, but contrary to my reading about this fruit, we did not find them to be particularly seedy, having found only 3 seeds in the 2 quarts that we collected.

Fruit mill making nice Kousa pulp

Spoon method

We started processing our Kousa Dogwood fruit by breaking them in half and scooping the sweet flesh out with a spoon, but soon tired of this and turned to my Squeezo fruit mill for assistance. The raw fruit went through the mill easily, but the few seeds that we came across were too large to fit through the auger and required several hard cranks to break them up and force them through.

The ground was covered with fruit

Our Kousa Dogwood pulp is juicy and sweet and a welcomed addition to the daily smoothie. Next time we pick Kousa Dogwood we will lay a tarp under the tree and shake it so that we only collect ripe fruit that are ready to fall off.

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Manchurian Walnut, another street tree

Large clusters of Manchurian Walnuts

Today I biked around town looking for more Heartnuts and was excited to find what I thought was a LOADED Heartnut, but it turned out to be a LOADED Manchurian Walnut (Juglans mandshurica). The resemblance is striking and I was not surprised to learn that Heartnut is sometimes classified as a variety of Manchurian Walnut (Juglans mandshurica var. sachalinensis).

Light gray bark with deep fissures

A handsome Manchurian Walnut that wasn't producing

Manchurian Walnuts grow slightly larger than Heartnuts reaching 75 feet tall. Their bark is virtually identical, with the same light grey color, but (perhaps) with slightly broader planes between the long deep fissures. Leaves are very large (16-36 inches long), with hairy petioles and 7-19 leaflets that are 3-8 inches long and 1-3 inches wide. Each leaflet has an acuminate tip and broad base. The underside of the leaflets are fuzzy haired and the upper sides are only sparsely pubescent. Nuts form in large clusters of usually 5-15 but occasionally up to 20! The husks are egg shaped and covered with a dense coat of resinous hairs. Husks are easily removed from the nuts by stepping on them or pounding them gently. Wear gloves if you don't want the husk juice to stain your hands. The nut shells are not as smooth as Heartnuts, having a texture much like Common or Persian Walnuts (Juglans regia). They are 1-1.25 inches long and not quite as wide, with a relatively spherical appearance except for an abruptly pointed tip. Manchurian Walnut shells are more difficult to crack than Heartnut shells, lacking the convenient trait of easily splitting into 2 pieces. They are harder to crack than Common Walnuts too, but still easier than Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra). Unfortunately, the nutmeats of Manchurian Walnuts are also harder to remove than Heartnuts, but they aren’t impossible and I expect that they will get easier as the nutmeats season and shrink away from the deep internal shell lobes.

Because the tree was dripping with nuts, I was able to fill my bike bucket pannier in just a few minutes. They are now squirreled away with my Heartnuts for a cold winter day when I’ll be craving some oily Walnuts.

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Heartnut, a cultivated Japanese Walnut

Heartnut hull, shell, and nut

Heartnut shells chewed open by squirrels

Today I picked Heartnuts (Juglans ailantifolia var. cordiformis) for the first time from a street tree near my house. I noticed the tree a couple months ago and was having trouble identifying it until I noticed some old heart-shaped nut shells beneath the tree.

A cluster of 10 Heartnuts

Leaflets with short petiolules and asymmetric basal lobes

Heartnut Bark is light grey and coarsely fissured

Heartnuts are a cultivated variety of Japanese Walnuts (Juglans ailantifolia) that grows about 60 feet tall and 16 to 36 inches in diameter with coarse, light grey bark. The leaves are very large reaching 3 feet in length and densely hairy with 11 to 17 pinnately arranged leaflets. Leaflets are ovate and 1.5-3 inches wide and 3-8 inches long; they have pointed tips, asymmetrically lobed bases, very short petiolules (less than 3/16 of an inch), and sparsely pubescent upper sides and densely haired undersides. Sometimes the terminal leaflet is missing or fused to one of the the first lateral leaflets giving it an odd appearance. The nut husks are fuzzy, egg shaped, 1-1.5 inches long and not quite as broad. Nuts are often in hanging clusters of up to 10. The husks can easily be removed by gently stepping on them and rolling them slightly beneath your shoe. The nuts are slightly smaller than the husks with a distinctive heart shape and a smooth outer shell and a significantly flattened appearance when viewed from the side. They crack easily to reveal a wing-shaped nut that is easy to remove unbroken. Like most nuts, they will be best after they are dried for a few months. Hopefully I will find a few more trees because the squirrels got most of the nuts from this one. I removed the husks from the few dozen nuts that I collected and will store them in a dry place until Christmas. They are supposed to have a sweet taste that lacks the strong aftertaste of Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra).

An odd Heartnut terminal leaflet doing double duty as a lateral leaflet.

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"Wild Blueberries," the Mountain Provides!

Yesterday, Katrina and I joined our local chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society for a hike around Table Mountain near Mount Baker. Our route took us through many subalpine meadows where we were able to enjoy the late season wildflowers and periodically pluck the fat fruits of Black Huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) and Cascade Blueberry (Vaccinium deliciosum). Together, these are two of our region’s most delicious Blueberry/Huckleberries, and I overheard a few arguments about which our members most favored.

A laden Cascade Blueberry bush

Black Huckleberry

There are other reasons to quibble over Blueberries and Huckleberries. They are part of the same genus and their names are sometimes used interchangeably causing much confusion over the difference between the two. For example, Cascade Blueberry is sometimes called Cascade Huckleberry and Velvetleaf Blueberry is sometimes called Velvetleaf Huckleberry. However, A simple pattern elucidates the difference. Typically all 7 of our native Vaccinium species with blue fruit are called Blueberries, and our 4 species that don’t have blue fruit are called Huckleberries. Thus, we have red fruited Red Huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium) and black fruited Black Huckleberry. Evergreen Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) sometimes challenges this rule with a rogue (and tasty) blue fruit variety, but the black fruited variety is more common. The red fruited Grouse Whortleberry (Vaccinium scoparium) of the eastern Cascades has a nice unique name, but some people call it (appropriately) Littleleaf Huckleberry.

Allan "examining" Cascade Blueberries

Black Huckleberries (left) and Cascade Blueberries (right)

After our circumambulatory sampling of Table Mountain’s fruit, Katrina and I set out to collect enough berries to bring back to our own feasting place. We had found the fruit production of Cascade Blueberries to vary considerably between different locations. The berries near Artist's Point were sparse, but farther down the trail, at the junction of the Ptarmigan Ridge Trail and the Galena Chain Lakes Trail, the bushes were laden with large fruit (briefly focusing our botanizing to a sensory analyses of just one species). Fruit production was sparse through the Chain Lakes, over the pass, and much of the way down to the Bagley Lakes, but near the Visitor Center the bushes were thick with small fruit. We didn’t want to bother with tiny fruit and were too tired to hike back out towards Ptarmigan Ridge, so we decided to explore the more accessible Ski Area for good fruit. It didn’t take us long to find a shady patch of meadow that was thickly laden with large berries of both Black Huckleberry and Cascade Blueberry. In a little more than an hour, Katrina and I picked 3 quarts of berries and never moved more than 40 feet from where we started.

Approaching perfection

Both berries are sweet and delicious with a nice subtle tartness. Cascade Blueberries have a thick texture that is similar to Bog Blueberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), or Salal (Gaultheria shallon) whereas Black Huckleberries have a much juicier texture. I think Cascade Blueberries are a little sweeter and milder flavored compared to the more explosive flavored Black Huckleberries. For me, the perfect handful is 10 Cascade Blueberries and 3 Black Huckleberries.

To the forager, every ecosystem can provide some form of delicious food. Supalpine meadows that are too rocky and steep for the plow, and have too short a growing season for “civilized” fare, are some of the most precious to those with a more adventurous palette. It is here that the forager finds mountain morsels with flavor—like the growing season—that is concentrated. So too is the picking experience... concentrated life!

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