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Where I live, blackberries grow wild in undisturbed vacant areas such as ditchbanks. Is that true for Canada? Maybe you have raspberries, too. It’s too hot to grow them here.
Where I live, there are wild blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. Lots of wild roses for people who make things with rose hips. There are other berry bushes I don’t know the names of as humans don’t find the berries edible/palatable but birds and bears do.
There are more than 200 species of wild plants that produce berries in Canada. The following article from the Canadian Encyclopedia lists only a few of the more common favourites: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....e/wild-berries
but here is a list of 24 of the most commonly recognized and used wild berries in Canada that are edible for humans. Many of these species (plus some others not on the following list) are now being developed, hybridized, cultivated etc. on a larger scale by agriculturists and universities across the country.
There are more than 200 species of wild plants that produce berries in Canada. The following article from the Canadian Encyclopedia lists only a few of the more common favourites: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....e/wild-berries
but here is a list of 24 of the most commonly recognized and used wild berries in Canada that are edible for humans. Many of these species (plus some others not on the following list) are now being developed, hybridized, cultivated etc. on a larger scale by agriculturists and universities across the country.
Not far at all. I used to like the wild raspberries that grew in my back yard in Calgary, and they were in the local park when I lived in Toronto too. Nice bits of refreshment on a hot day.
Blueberries are easy to find in Ontario. If you're driving Highway 17 around Sudbury, watch out for the berry-pickers--they'll be all over the highway, running back and forth across the roadway, trying to get to the blueberry bushes that grow in the median.
I'd say it depends on one's geographical and climate location and of course the time of year, since all of them are seasonal. Not all of the berries listed grow everywhere in Canada, they are all specific to various regions and regional climate conditions. Some of them only grow in the west, some in the east, some in the north and some in the south. Some are being developed and cultivated by humans, some are not and their very existence is entirely dependent on the existence of the birds and wild animals that spread the seeds.
Where I live close to wildlands I don't have to travel too far to come across blackberries, raspberries, salmon berries, thimble berries, blue berries, huckleberries, alpine strawberries, honeysuckle berries, cranberries, elderberries, red or black currents, gooseberries. And some other species of berries that are edible but far too bitter or too mealy and seedy to eat.
If I go hiking along near the ocean shorelines I can also find rosa rugosa rosehips - the best rose species there is on earth for producing huge, fat, juicy, sweet, tender fleshed rose hips with a flavour that tastes rather like a cross between sweet apricots, strawberries and sweet citrus fruits combined with the scent and slight flavour of rose petals. So high in Vitamin C content (more than any other known rose hip species) that to eat too much of the hips will give you the serious trots, so one needs to consume them and their Vitamin C content in great moderation. They are good for making medicines though.
Growing up in Vancouver in the 1960's and 70's, there were plenty of wild berries around. Always picked the ones higher up, because you know, dogs.
Not wild berries, but a fond memory I have as a kid, is my uncle coming down from the Okanagan with boxes full of cherries, peaches, plums and various other fruit.
Strawberry picking was something we kids did occasionally. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think we picked our own, since it was cheaper to buy them that way. Some kids, I believe did pick for money per box.
Speaking of BC strawberries. The variety that I used to love seems not to be grown much here any more. I believe it had something to do with the variety not great for importing since they were smaller and softer.
Growing up in Vancouver in the 1960's and 70's, there were plenty of wild berries around. Always picked the ones higher up, because you know, dogs.
Not wild berries, but a fond memory I have as a kid, is my uncle coming down from the Okanagan with boxes full of cherries, peaches, plums and various other fruit.
Strawberry picking was something we kids did occasionally. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think we picked our own, since it was cheaper to buy them that way. Some kids, I believe did pick for money per box.
Speaking of BC strawberries. The variety that I used to love seems not to be grown much here any more. I believe it had something to do with the variety not great for importing since they were smaller and softer.
That still happens here, that people come from the Okanagan with boxes of fruit.
We picked strawberries when I was a kid. Strawberry season, we would get up far too early for a very long drive to a strawberry farm, so as to be there before it got too hot. We would be providing our own ice cream pails, and we were taught by our mother to pick the plants clean, not row hop the way we would see city people do, looking for the perfect berry. Occasionally the farmer would cast a suspicious eye our way, as we were very young, and he'd be checking where we picked and it was always perfect. We picked a lot of strawberries. I think it was somewhere between 15-20 pails full for our family. My mother would make jams and preserves. The most miserable part was the long drive home when we were hot in a car that wasn't air-conditioned and then having to sort and clean all the berries.
Other than that, as wild growing fruit we had saskatoons and chokecherries. It's getting harder to find choke cherries since the trees all have that fungus. Saskatoons you had to pick in the bush. There were no saskatoon farms then. Sometimes there would be wild strawberries but it depended on where you lived and there were never enough for anything more than a few sweet, tiny berries to be shared.
I used to pick Saskatoons in the bush with my family when I was a small. My mother made Saskatoon pies as well as canned the fruit for winter. I would have much preferred blueberries (bigger size with a lot fewer little stones) but blueberries require an acid soil and the clay soil here is alkaline.
I did have a chance to pick blueberries as an adult in Ontario on a blueberry farm about 90 minutes east of Toronto. Beautiful big plump berries. I was told the land had the only acidic soil for miles around.
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