This is the season when our third-of-a-mile round trip hike to
the mailbox gets us to thinking about one our most favorite
homemade jellies. As soon as the walk down our long driveway
nears the road we begin looking for the strikingly white flowers
of the wild blackberries. The high rainfall in recent weeks
hopefully will result in a good crop of these luscious fruits
later this summer. This berry, considered to be genuine ambrosia
by nearly all people as well as many wild creatures, is known to
be American’s most valuable wild fruit.
The Rubus (RUE-bus) genus, named after the Roman term
"ruber" meaning red, includes 205 species of a small
number of raspberries and many species of blackberries in the
eighth edition of Gray’s Manual of Botany. Dr. Albert Fuller,
long-time curator of botany at the Milwaukee Public Museum and a
founder of the Ridges Sanctuary at Baileys Harbor, worked at
better identification of the wild blackberries of Wisconsin
during his retirement years, an extremely difficult genus to
study.
Most of the blackberries are born on brambles that warrant
one’s utmost respect. Being in the rose family, the flowers have
five petals that usually are white. The black, shiny, sweet,
berry consists of numerous drupelets, each with a seed, adhering
to a juicy core. Canes are usually upright or arching and the
leaves are greening beneath.
How I cherish the memories of going with my dad and two older
brothers, Leo and Ivan, to a place north of Mountain, Wis. to
pick wild blackberries. Dishpans, soup kettles, pails, all were
brimming and the trunk of our 1937 Chevrolet was filled with the
toothsome fruit when we arrived home late Sunday night. My mouth
waters just thinking about the many jars of blackberries,
blackberry jelly and jam my mother put up in those days.
Another member of the large Rubus genus became a favorite of
ours around 40 years ago, the thimbleberry, Rubus
parviflorus, (par-vi-FLOW-rus). Names of berries, by the
way, can be quite localized. As a result you may find a dozen or
more plants called thimbleberries. The one I refer to grows near
the northeastern shore of Door County, generally north of
Sturgeon Bay, ontoWashington Island, Rock Island, the Keweenaw
Peninsula of Upper Michigan, Isle Royale National Park, and
northward and westwa rd into the mountains.
Constant summer coolness and moisture are two of its important
requirements. One reaches a specific elevation in, for example,
the Rocky Mountains, where the moisture and lower temperatures
are just right and there you will find thimbleberries doing very
well.
It was while watching the early morning weather on TV quite a
few years ago that Willard Scott held up a jar of thimbleberry
jam and said to the effect, "Our viewing friends from the
Keweenaw Peninsula sent this jar of jam and claim that the only
place in the world where thimbleberries grow is on their great
peninsula!" I would enjoy seeing the expressions on their
faces upon visiting the northeastern shore areas of the Door
Peninsula.
Leaves of this marvelous plant are unusually large, velvety
and appear to have come from some kind of maple tree. Canes are
smooth and have no thorns. The extremely tart, small-seeded
fruits flatten when picked, ripen in early August and can be made
into an extraordinarily delectable jam.
Our friend of years ago, Miss Emma Toft, who was a master at
picking these unusual berries and transforming them into superb
jam, offered us the following advice. First line your pail with
a few fresh thimbleberry leaves and try to pick the berries
clean. They are too fragile and difficult to pick over before
making the jam.
Combine one cup of sugar with each cup of fruit, bring to a
boil and immediately turn off the heat. Put into sterilized jars
and you have, as Miss Emma would have said, "the jam with
the pine woods flavor," the world’s finest.
The species name of the thimbleberry,
parviflorus," means small-flowered and is rather
poorly chosen. Actually this plant’s blossoms are very large,
nearly the size of a silver dollar. They are still in flower in
the more shady sites. Now is the time we like to scout out the
areas where we’ll try to pick enough fruit this August for making
a dozen or more half-pint jars of jam.
Years back we were introduced to an unusually excellent
campfire treat. Friends had a pound cake which they sliced into
quarter-inch-thick pieces. One half of each "sandwich"
was spread with thimbleberry jam, followed by a few thin squares
of chocolate, then completed with a couple of freshly toasted
marshmallows, finally completed with the remaining slice of pound
cake. Believe me, this produced a prize-winning, mouth-watering
dessert fit for visiting dignitaries to the boreal forest!
Thimbleberry flowers, now in bloom, will lead to
ripening fruit in early August, prized for jam making.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 07/03/2004.
© Copyright 2004 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
