Foraging has always been a popular activity for avid outdoorsmen, and summer is a great time to try your hand at supplementing your diet with some wild produce. Here are several easily identifiable berries that grow in West Virginia's woods that you can be on the lookout for as you hike. As always, never eat anything you find if you are not 100% confident of the ID!
Wineberries are some of the first of the summer berries to ripen in the West Virginia woods.
The stems are covered in fine, prickly hairs and the fruit is protected by a long narrow bud until it begins to ripen.
The berries themselves are a beautiful, jewel-like reddish color when ripe and slip easily off the plant when picked.
The flavor is mild and sweet.
Mulberries, which grow on trees rather than bushes and are often found in yards and hedges rather than deep in wild forests, are another early summer option.
Mulberry leaves are toothed on the edges but irregular in general shape, ranging from single teardrop shape to more of a mitten or three-fingered glove shape.
The fruit starts out white, then turns red as it ripens and finally a very dark purple-black when it is ready to eat.
The flavor is mild and sweet, and the juice will stain your fingers!
Wild blueberries are smaller than their grocery store counterparts and typically ripen in mid to late August.
They grow on bushes with leaves that form an alternating pattern on the branches. The pattern is so pronounced that the branches appear to zig-zag a bit rather than being perfectly straight. The fruit is bursting with all the sweet tartness of a grocery-store blueberry, but the flavor is even stronger since it comes in a smaller package.
Wild blackberries are also a late July to August fruit, and when found in the wild, grow on a brambly bush with thorny stems.
They are sweetest when they are fully ripe and slip easily from their stems.
What other berries do you like to pick in the woods? Black raspberries are popular, as are wintergreen berries. Other summer and fall fruit that may or may not be classified as berries but are still worth looking out for as you hike include apples (most commonly found at old homestead sites), paw paws, and persimmons.
Be sure to check yourself for ticks after you've harvested wild fruit: these parasites love the thick underbrush and tall grass that often characterize wild berry patches!
There's wild fruit all over the West Virginia woods, but here's one example of a popular picking spot!
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