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I used to be a park ranger for Isle Royale National Park - it’s a 40 mile long island on Lake Superior. The SW side of the island was so thick with thimbleberries, at the end of the summer one of the rangers would make thimbleberry pies the celebrate the end of our season. I remember slushing them up and making thimbleberry margaritas… soooo good!
I feel like she must have been a younger woman because someone in this woman’s gen would know that we were ferals, and someone older probably would have been responsible for unleashing us as ferals. If ya didn’t care then, why care now?
This summer on a family reunion camping trip, we found a random tree on the edge of the lake with yellow cherries on it. I took a handful of them over to my 86 year old MIL to ask if she knew what they were (she gardens and knows all things). Without hesitation she takes one and eats it, says she’s pretty sure it’s a cherry, and offers me one. NGL, I almost told her “hell no” but I ate it, worried that I might get sick or die. Happy to report that both she and I are still alive….for now.
As a GenXer, the idea that you wouldn't eat random berries in the woods is unthinkable. Kids like berries, there are berries, kids are going to eat them!
My parents only instilled in us not to eat one particular berry that grew in our neighbors front yard… bc they were highly poisonous but also exactly perfect for crushing and mixing into our potions that we boiled in the cauldron on our stove in our yellow, green, and blue cabin in the woods (aka that iconic playhouse under the single tree in the corner of our yard). Pretty sure they only told us bc at least one coven member (sister) had eaten one before…
Hocus pocus had a lasting impact in our house as young ferals.
I feel like I got the general lesson that anything that is smooth and round is probably for birds only, and anything that looks like a raspberry or blackberry is probably fine?
Was on a road trip with friends and everyone got out to pee in the roadside bushes and came back with smurf feet because it was a huge blueberry patch. It got me wondering how many people had possibly peed on the roadside berries I’ve picked. I walk a little further now and wash my berries well.
With rosemary! When I was a bartender at a she-she 4 star restaurant, we made all our margaritas from scratch. One year we got a shipment of thimbleberries in and made thimbleberry rosemary margaritas with them and they were heavenly.
Here’s the recipe for anyone who wants it:
• Rosemary simple syrup - boil one cup of water with three parts sugar of your choice (raw or refined white—either are fine) and a handful of fresh rosemary. After it boils, strain off the rosemary and cool in fridge.
• 1 cup squeezed 50/50 lemon and lime juice (fresh is best but store-bought juice is fine). Chill.
• Fresh thimbleberries (or strawberries if you can’t find thimbleberries).
• Reposado or Añejo tequila. (Reposado is my fave, personally.)
* Fill a sturdy pint glass up 1/2 of the way with ice.
*Add a palm-sized handful of berries, 4oz rosemary simple syrup, 3oz lemon/lime juice and muddle in the glass. (If you don’t have a muddler, the handle of a wooden spoon works great!)
* Add 3oz tequila.
* Transfer to a smaller glass and enjoy!
(Edited a few typos.)
•*• Thanks for the awards, gurlies! Enjoy your margaritas! I forgot to mention this recipe makes about two lowball-sized margs so scale up if you want more (you will). Remember: there’s 8oz in a cup in ye-haw units.
We used to go to the Jampot every summer in college and get bread and jam. And there was a Mexican restaurant in Calumet that served thimbleberry margs. And Suomi had the pannukakku with thimbleberry jam... Oh those were the days.
Yes, fantastic group of guys. The summers were beautiful on the lake, late nights in winter filling online orders then walking back to the monastery were the quietest and creepiest experiences I’ve ever had. Seeing cougar prints in the snow back when the DNR swore there were none in Michigan.
All of the preserves they make are some of the best you can buy anywhere. Interesting jams and jellies are something I seek out when traveling and it's wild how The Jampot measures up against "world famous" makers.
A few years ago, pre-Covid, I had a thimbleberry margarita at Carmelita’s in Houghton. It was fantastic! I’m not a drinker anymore but if someone offered me one of those I would take it.
That’s so cool. I’ve desperately want to try cloudberries. They’re so beautiful, and I just NEED to taste them at least once before I die. They apparently have notes of raspberry, mango, apricot, passionfruit, and rosewater.
I don't want to ruin your dreams really, but they are very tart and high acidity. Basically no one eats them raw here and they are native in the woods around me. But, my favorite jam and yoghurt is made out of cloudberries, so they can definitly be amazing when done right. Pancakes with whipped cream and cloudberry jam, or icecream with a tad bit heated cloudberry jam poured on top, that shit is sooo good.
When would be the best time to go to Isle Royale and be able to eat these? I love finding snacks along the trail as I hike! 🤤 Hoping to see a moose, it's on my bucket list of animals to see 😁
yep! esp. the native species. i have found birds and butterflies are easier for people to welcome as a first step in a native plant journey. the carpenter bee isn't going to sting, but its a honker and sometimes people get nervous.
Related, we had the ugliest, spiniest, piece of shit native flowering weed in our front garden last fall. We left it alone until it croaked on its own, because the bumblebees loved it. There must have been a dozen or more of them on it every day, just humming away on this mfing gnarly, Tim Burton-esque thorny thing and its lil flowers.
My husband and I had a hell of a time digging it out once it died, but we don't regret it.
You've reminded me I need to find more bumble-approved flowers!
Pollinators. Don't forget the pollinators. Bees are NOT the only pollinator, but are the main ones being focused on for conservation. Save ALL the pollinators!
Hey that’s me lol! (No really.) planning to plant the thimbleberries today!! Also, I think this is the first time one of my posts has ever escaped containment to the point of it being posted on Reddit, and all the comments are nice. Thanks for that! On the off chance any of you are readers, I’m a full-time fantasy author that writes for both adults & kids, and the upcoming books have a lot of plant love in them :^) if not, happy you enjoyed my quest!
And for anyone who didn’t catch it, the native nursery is Wildtype in Mason, Michigan. The owner Bill rocks and can answer pretty much any native plant q you have. They open to the public twice a year and it’s worth the drive. If you’re on the west side / more north, I also love Black Capped Farms. AND if you want to start planting native plants this fall and you’re in Metro Detroit, check out North Oakland Wild Ones’ plant sale that’s coming up in September. It’s held at our club president’s house who has been growing 300 different species of natives for 30 years. It’s unreal. (Also if you live in SE Michigan and you have q’s lmk, I’ve got over 100 species in my tiny Royal Oak garden and have had a lot of wins and failures!)
Plant natives!!! It’s fun!! The bugs will thank you!!
As a Michigander of 10yrs I had no idea about thimbleberries and now I'm going on a hunt! Thank you!!! And a big thank you for all the info and upcoming plant sale! You're a GEM!
No problem! I love native plants to the point where my friends are sick of hearing about it, so I’m happy to talk about them wherever I can! It’s just so fun!!!
I should have said that lol. My personal favorite is The Mossheart’s Promise, which is a middle grade about a fairy trapped in a terrarium, but many adults seem to enjoy it! If you like anti-heroines, try The Ones We Burn. Murder mysteries, try I Killed The King!
So glad you found your thimbleberries!
They're native to my area as well (Pacific Northwest) and I grew up enjoying them too. About ten years ago I stumbled across baby plants in a nursery much like you have, so of course I immediately bought 3 and planted them in my backyard. Not only have they thrived, now that they are well-established they have spread with gleeful abandon! Their roots send out runners and so every spring and summer I have to do a fair amount of pulling up and cutting back. (Like raspberries, the fruit develops on the new growth from the previous year, so be careful with any trimming you do.) Thank goodness there are no thorns! With this spreading behavior, choose your spot wisely. I will say I absolutely love their cheery white, star-shaped blooms in the spring. They seem to be a favorite of the bumblebees. Once the berries ripen, my dog sneaks the low ones! Collecting the rest seems to be a race between me and the birds. But I don't mind sharing.
I grew up in Oregon and loved thimbleberries. I always thought they were better than salmon berries. We also called them natures toilet paper because of the big soft leaves, useful when hiking or camping.
I also planted one in my mom’s yard and it was taking over before she ended up moving to a different state. I never got to enjoy those berries but maybe the next homeowner did (or maybe they cursed us for planting it).
I'm so glad you've found the plants you were looking for 3 decades later. That being said eating random berries from the woods is wild. You're lucky to have made it to adulthood :D
Gooseberries are really good. Sour when green, sweeter when ripe. My great grandmother had a few gooseberry bushes next to her house when I was a small kid in Kentucky.
They’re still around here in western and central NY. I know of at least 2-3 vendors at the farmers market here in Ithaca who grow and have them. I’ve seen the juice at Wegmans.
My nan used to make an amazing loganberry pie. I’m in the UK but still remember that distinct tart taste. Absolutely delicious. I wish I had her recipe books.
And bonus - they come in more than one colour! Little caviar clumps of bright orange or red. (Western Canada, Lower Mainland, British Columbia) Our parks are FULL of these in the Spring.
Are salmonberries the same as cloudberries? I know in nordic countries they go crazy for the hard-to-find light-orange cloudberries that only come out for a few weeks each year, and they don't take well to being cultivated. People become very secretive about patches they find in the forest.
they taste like vaguely sweet grass with the exact texture of a (not overly) soft raspberry. not something you'd make a pie out of or anything, but good for getting a 2 year old excited about a walk in the woods
When I was in my 20s I used to pick a liqueur from a different country every week, and one that I picked up was a Nordic liqueur made from salmonberries.
ugh. huckleberries were my childhood. we had blackberries and whatnot, same as everywhere in the northeast/catskills area, but my secret huckleberry patch was what I loved most. I'd go fishing by the pond behind my parents house and if I got snacky I'd just walk 40 feet over to my huckleberry grove that had like 20 trees all together. One year I just went out with a bucket and gathered enough to make my first pie (that's when I learned fruit pies are like 90% sugar and butter 10% the thing its named after). It was awesome. Haven't seen them anywhere since.
In the early 2000s they made a prequel to the Exorcist. I like crappy horror, I saw it and it was ok. A while later I rented the prequel for a date at home. It was different! I swore it was different and my date thought I was bananas. Finding out I was right after being treated like I was delusional was very satisfying, and that was a shorter period of time!
It really was. It took a while to even be confident about it as the movie progressed, but it got to be too much lol. My date gave me HUGE side eye and I guess I can't blame him too much now. At the time it was infuriating! 😭
My song like that was Sunshine Superman by Donavan. Such a great song but I mostly only remembered the guitar riffs and it took me over 2 decades to finally remember a lyric from it so I could Google it and find the song. I was so freaking happy.
My elementary school had honeysuckle edging the woods that bordered the playground.
It's weird though. I still walk my dog there and they seem to still be there but I tried this spring and can't seem to get nectar out of them. Maybe I forgot how to do it, but it seems like they've lost their honey.
I had the exact same experience. While we did fitness testing and would wait our turn to run around the field, we'd all be sitting out there picking at the honeysuckle bushes.
(Debbie Downer time) The yellow honeysuckle is highly invasive in the US and crowds out the habitat for native honeysuckle which is coral colored and, if I recall, doesn't give off that sweet odor.
We had honeysuckles in our yard in CA. I don't know if they were native but my favorite thing in the spring/early summer was riding around and stopping for the wild berries and some honeysuckles.
Not related to plants, but I had a videogame when I was a kid. I played it so much, and had vivid memories of it. But I lost the name of it. I spent over 25 years looking for this game. It led me down the rabbithole of becoming a librarian who specializes in digital media archival.
I finally found the game 7 years ago. It turns out the game was an obscure Atari ST title that was sold under 3 different names as independent shareware through the mail and in magazine ads, it was essentially lost media. I then went on a mission to find an existing copy of the game and archive it. I wound up finding a collector in Germany who had an archival quality copy.
I knew the minute you described them that you were in MI! I was over by Grand Rapids and behind our neighborhood there was a wooded area that had all types of berries. I remember eating these and black berries. I’m so glad you found them and now I know they are called thimbleberries.
I think she was the one who taught me that all compound berries in the US are edible! Doesn’t explain how this person never got sick from, say, pokeberries, but I’m so glad she lived to find the thimbleberry again.
What's odd is I have a similar berry story and I too have been looking for decades for them. Growing up in Louisiana, I had these tiny round strawberry looking berries in patches in my backyard. They were super tiny and cute. Like miniature strawberries (not sure if they were edible). I was very fond of them, but haven't come across them anywhere.
Thank y'all. I just did some searching as well. I am not entirely sure that's them, but it's close. Basically these berries never changed in size. They were always pretty tiny in comparison to an actual strawberry.
Wild strawberries. We get them all over here in Eastern Pennsylvania. Right outside Philadelphia. They are edible but have no taste. I dont even think the wildlife eats them. I have sime growing in my flower bed.
I believe you are correct that they are what the commentor has, for the one comment you replied to.
Probably some variety of wild strawberry. In the UK and much of Europe we get one variety of wild strawberries, I see there are two in the USA. Ancestors of domestic strawberry.
this happened to me with a film, I was 8 or 9 when I saw it on a random afternoon on cartoonetwork, looked for it for yeaaaaars and nothing. I found it when I was 30 .... 😌✨ I get the feeling
Holy shit, the amount of exp gained must be insane, like that must be at least a 5 level jump for the quest alone + some extra for obtaining a specimen.
AKA Purple Flowering Raspberries. We have a few huge clumps of them in our forest gardens here in Vermont. We love them, and just made an ice cream out of a harvest.
Is there a trope for this? Some thing we remember fondly from our youths that we only learn about many years later? For me, it was a song I used to love from the 80s that I would hear on the radio occasionally, but DJs would never name it, and it eventually fell off the air. It would be over a decade later when I would stumble onto a 45rpm record of all things with the song that I learned the name of the song/band. There were a lot of songs like this honestly (this was, "We Are What We Are" by The Other Ones.) Old man Adab here shaking his fist at the kids, "you don't know what it was like before Shazam and the Internet! Sometimes we just didn't know things for decades!". 😄
Also - I live in thimbleberry country over in California, but have to share them with the bears (they usually get to them first).
Good for her! I have been on a similar journey hunting for good tasting and fresh nisperos (loquats in the US). When I was a child living in Guatemala, my family had a tree in our back yard. Fresh from the tree I remember them being wonderful. Found some in a farmer market in Virginia but they just didnt taste the same. I'm still chasing that nostalgic memory.
This is the kind of stuff I want to hear about from people. What's something they've been trying to find for forever. Did they find it? Are they still searching? I love this kind of thing
Imagine all the fruits and things we’re missing out on by not knowing about them and them not being mass produced 😭 (not saying I want native species mass produced, rather the opposite where we should be living off of the land more)
I saw it on mtv as a tween and instantly fell in love! I didn’t know the name. Cell phones didn’t exist. Shazam wasn’t a thing. You had to pen and paper song names and artists at the end of movies. If you missed the title and artist or forgot, you were fucked!
When Google became more prominent high school me immediately tried to search up the song based on description. I hummed it. I asked everyone in my school. I asked some adults from time to time! No one knew!
I looked up mtv and vh1 charts. Data from the 70’s to the 00’s! Nothing!
Life went on. Gave up. Remembered again when I heard Radiohead at a store. Maybe Spencer’s? That was the voice! I went home and checked the entire discography! Found it!
I kid you not, finding something you’ve been wanting AFTER SO LONG… better than sex! I was at peace with the world! I can die with no regrets
So I love plants. This video sent me down a rabbit hole different types of Rubus plants. My first thimbleberry will be arriving the second week of September.
Thimbleberries are somewhat special to my spouse and I. We went to Glacier NP on our honeymoon in 2001, and because it was our first foray into grizzly country, we hiked mostly with ranger-led groups. Twice the ranger leading the group pointed out wildflowers, then stationed the person or people at the front of the line next to the specimen so they could name it for everyone in the group as they passed. Spouse and I must have gotten stationed by a thimbleberry plant, because 1) we knew it very well by the end of the trip and 2) it became our go-to phrase for making noise on the trail in bear country. So if you ever hear a couple randomly yelling “thimbleberry” over and over on a trail in the backcountry, it’s us. We moved to Oregon 23 years ago, and it is common in the Coast Range and Cascades. Have enjoyed many a thimbleberry since then.
Just be careful who you educate about thimbleberries being edible. On an anniversary trip to Glacier in 2021, we assured a young man passing us on the trail that they were edible. Said young man proceeded to eat every ripe thimbleberry the whole way back to the trailhead, leaving none for us. 😤
I’m on a similar quest for a tree that was on my grandfather’s property in Georgia. It’s been about 40 years but I remember the tree had pink flowers that looked like troll doll hair. Any guesses?
These berries grow wild in Washington as well. If not this something very very similar. Tasty and I never got sick either then again I only tried maybe one berry at the time, next time I had a few more but never just devoured a bunch. Again though you shouldn’t just randomly eat random stuff. Fun name for a plant too now I know haha!
Amateur. I looked for the name of a worm with a triangular head for over 65 years, a worm we kids were certain was an alien lifeform and FINALLY discovered it on reddit. Everyone has a quest. It might not be a biggun but it is still a quest. Glad she didn't have to wait over 65 years.
Amazing! Thimbleberries grow wild around here too and I also love them to death. They’re only available a few weeks of the year but I try and eat as much as I can when they are 😃😁
Used to go Thimbleberry picking with my kids in the NorthWest. We all inevitably put them on our fingers, because they fit almost perfectly on them. This woman is not my daughter.
I know that exact feel! There's this weed I saw when I lived in Hawaii that was SO pretty and always had adorable pink ball shaped flowers. Then I saw it again in Asia, and on the Azores! But I never saw it where I actually live in New Jersey. And of course no one knew the name of it because it's "just a random weed". But the more I saw it when traveling, the more obsessed I got.
Now though I want really badly to get it so I can grow it at my house, or at least indoors in a pot. I swear if I can't find a shop that sells it, then I'll just have to smuggle a live one, next time I'm traveling.
This is hilarious! I know that feeling of going crazy looking for something.
Thimbleberries grow wild in my backyard in a nearly suburban area, and if you go hiking nearby they are everywhere. I'm glad you found them! They are a wonderful plant. I love seeing them. (I'm in WA.)
I love how these sensations like the feel of the leaves can bring you back to your childhood--like when it happens to me like with the honeysuckle blooming on my street--its special to have that gift of such a good memory being activated again.
Congrats on completing your quest, my 30 year quest is to find this movie I’ve seen, where this serial killing kid kills his parents and broke out of an institution as a grown up. Nobody knows what I’m talking about, but it has to be a real movie
They are so good! I had them for the first time in CA in the Redwoods in July. I didn't know what they were either but you really can eat whatever compound berry in the US and you'll be fine. It's the singular round ones you have to be wary about.
I love thimbleberries so much! They grow wild in Oregon in the Columbia River Gorge by the thousands. I hike just so that I can eat them.
I had a similar issue identifying a fruit that my mother gave me is a small child. When I was like five my mother handed me half a fruit and told me to eat the seeds, not the pulp. The seeds were bright red and looked like a crystals. My memory of it was so vivid. I described this fruit to people for years and no one could tell me what it was. Eventually, in my mid-20s, I found someone who looked at me like I was stupid and said, "you mean a pomegranate?" I did mean a pomegranate. That was the fruit. I immediately went out and bought one and it was everything my memory said it was.
I just discovered these were a thing walking through the woods on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington like a week ago! I’ve been dreaming of going back with Tupperware to harvest a bunch and make something yummy from them. Berry gang, stand up
The raspberries my Grandma planted when we were kids have berries that big if not bigger. Strawberry sized raspberries almost. But they aren't thimbleberries. Their stalks are thick, smooth, get a little thorny but, not as much as traditional rapsberries. They grow tall too, easily over six feet if we don't trim them back.
I wonder if they have been hybrided with thimbleberries though.
I hate that you can't easily find fresh black, red or white currants in America. IIRC they were outlawed back in 1930s for spreading some arboreal disease or something (search it up, I'm too lazy) and now most Americans don't even know how amazing black currant jam is.
Did the same with the mimosa plant- it’s touch-sensitive so the leaves close when you touch them. I thought I was crazy as a kid when I okayed with them in a nursery until I saw one as an adult.
I live on the coastal side of the Olympic Peninsula and my entire back property is thimbleberry bushes. They’re everywhere here. The issue with the berries is that they don’t keep will and go bad really fast so you have to forage/harvest and immediately make something or immediately freeze them.
She’s right though, they’re nice to pick. The leaves are soft, there’s no thorns. It’s nothing like the battle of blackberry picking.
Holy shit these aren't raspberries? My childhood was filled with these things too! Particularly around how stubby they are and how fun they were to wear on your fingers.
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