Mountain ash aka rowan

Regenerative Subsistence Flora Food & Medicine
#1

i located a mountain ash tree nearby, loaded down with clusters of orange berries who look a little like tiny apples. i read that they taste better after frost, and they have an acid inside that needs some processing to neutralize–drying, cooking, freezing or fermenting. some have dropped already and yep, they taste super bitter! i found a recipe for making wine with them, but it called for a ton of sugar. maybe they’d add an interesting flavor to mead, with some ginger.

also, their wood has big medicine to the druids, good for protection against enchantment and warding off evil influences, so tools made with it have a little extra oomph. sounds like a plant who really wants to help us. . .

anyone have any good real life experiences with these guys?

#2

We used to huck’em at each other as kids. Nowadays, I don’t do that anymore, especially wit unripe berries 'cause they don’t germinate, so I use them differently like for drinks, jams, and dried cakes. I heard it offers strong wood too.

To me they do taste better after the first couple of frost, especially with a little sweetener. Hey, and I just read from a reliable source that said something like, “the berries contain a cyanide related compound and parascorbic acid (a possible carcinogenic compound). Cookin’ neutralizes these two compounds.” Not for sure, I guess drying the berries (seeds specifically) neutralizes the two compounds aswell because I know it works to neutrilize similar compounds in service berries, plums 'n cherries.

#3

so you use them before they ripen? how?