those were horse chestnuts i bet, they were planted all over the place where i live as well, raining inedible nuts everywhere in the fall - a cruel joke by those who planted them.
“will hunt and gather for food”
i want a t-shirt that says that!
black and green distro on myspcae sells shirts that say that on them!
I have some experience gathering “American Chestnuts.” To remove the spines from the outer shell I role them against the ground with my foot in shoe, with just enough downward pressure to break away the spines. I do the same to crack the nut sometimes or I use hard woods or rocks by crushing the nut open. I’ve had few that tasted unpalatable but for the most part I love’em and find respect them as a worthwhile food sourse.
acorns have begun to fall already here–still green. i gathered a bunch, shelled 'em pretty quickly with a brick, and set them to soaking. as a kid in new hampshire, we gathered tons of them but i think my mom didn’t soak them long enough, or change the water enough times, or something. . . after one failed experiment she pronounced them inedible. i have her copy of euell gibbons Stalking the Wild Asparagus–I assume she went by that, which says to boil them, with several changes of boiling water. i hope to find a way that works–will update.
the exciting bonus–acorn grubs! i found a few. they actually tasted pretty good, almost sweet, and buttery.
mods–eprimed.
Oh dont forget Salal Berries! And in fact the entire Salal plant is edible… Good for burns as well I belive. I also like oregon grape and huckleberries…
hmmm, wild strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, all up in the high mountains here…
down lower in the montane areas (6,000 feet here) we have acorns, pine nuts, oregon grape berries, wild grapes, mulberries, currants, gooseberries, saskatoons, rosehips, walnuts (some years), sumach, elderberries, and there’s probably more I don’t know about yet.
Saskatoons and Elderberries are probably my favorite berries… and Acorns my favorite nuts of all time!
[quote=“yarrow dreamer, post:10, topic:238”]I gathered a huge shirt-hem full of local chestnuts, but they tasted terrrible. a friend said the one who fathers her, who tends sheep and lives in trees in the basque country, calls them pilongos (spelling?). i looked for more info online and found out that in some countries, people use that word as an insult. hm.
their skin shone smooth & almost glossy instead of slightly hairy–that’s where I went wrong. otherwise they looked the same as chestnuts. disappointing, that tree drops zillions of them and they look so tasty. . .[/quote]
The Horse Chestnut, and the Ohio Buckeye are both inedible, so be careful when thinking this may be the edible chestnut. It’s easy to tell them apart when you know what to look for. The main difference, I think (let me know if wrong) is that the Buckeyes are shiny and larger, rounder, and with a larger “tan” bottom, while the edible chestnuts are smaller, pointier on top, and more dull brown, and sometimes flat on a side due to having two in a pod… that’s what I remember being told at least…
[quote=“Dream of Stars, post:18, topic:238”][quote author=yarrow dreamer link=topic=241.msg2559#msg2559 date=1182895550]
I gathered a huge shirt-hem full of local chestnuts, but they tasted terrrible. a friend said the one who fathers her, who tends sheep and lives in trees in the basque country, calls them pilongos (spelling?). i looked for more info online and found out that in some countries, people use that word as an insult. hm.
their skin shone smooth & almost glossy instead of slightly hairy–that’s where I went wrong. otherwise they looked the same as chestnuts. disappointing, that tree drops zillions of them and they look so tasty. . .
[/quote]
The Horse Chestnut, and the Ohio Buckeye are both inedible, so be careful when thinking this may be the edible chestnut. It’s easy to tell them apart when you know what to look for. The main difference, I think (let me know if wrong) is that the Buckeyes are shiny and larger, rounder, and with a larger “tan” bottom, while the edible chestnuts are smaller, pointier on top, and more dull brown, and sometimes flat on a side due to having two in a pod… that’s what I remember being told at least…[/quote]
This reminds me. 
I roasted sweet chestnuts for the first time this fall-summer in my oven by following and combining 6 recipes I research online. The finished dish reminded me of lil baked sweet potatoes…delicious and I must say probably my favorite nut next to hazel.
A quote from EDIBLE AND USEFUL WILD PLANTS Of the United States and Canada, by Charles Francis Saunders page 81 “There is a beautiful little tree called the California Buckeye (Aesculus Californicus, Nutt.) which whitens with its fine thyres of bloom the hillsides of spring near streams in central and northern California. In summer and autumn it acquires another conspicuousness due to early dropping of its foliage, baring the limbs even in August. It then becomes a very skeleton of a tree upon which the fruits, hanging thick, look like so many dry, plump figs. The leathery rind of the latter encloses one or two thin shelled nuts, shiny and reddish brown like those of the tree’s cousins, the Buckeyes of the Middle West. To the white folk these nuts, attractive as they appear, seem nevertheless devoid of food possibilities; indeed, in their raw state, they are known to be poisonous. That the Indian should have discovered how to turn them into fuel for the human machine seems, therefore, even more remarkable than the conversion of the acorn into an edible ration. Yet that is what the Indian did, by a method that consists of essentially roasting the nuts and then washing out the poison. One wonders how many prehistoric Californians died martyrs in the perfection of this process. Mr. Chestnut, in his treatise already quoted on California Indian uses of plants, records in detail how the transformation into edibility is accomplished: The Buckeyes are placed in the conventional stone lined baking pit which has first been made hot with a fire; they are then covered over with earth and allowed to steam for several hours,until the nuts have acquired the consistency of boiled potatoes. They may then either be sliced placed in a basket and soaked in running water for from two to five days ( depending on the thinness of the slices), or mashed and rubbed up with water into a paste (the thin skin being incidentally separated by this process) and afterwards soaked from one two ten hours in a sand filter, the water as it drains away conveying with it the noxious principle. It was customary to eat the resultant mass cold and without salt.”
Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is a tree common in lowland sites in the South-East US (I’ve seen it all the way up in NY, though). It has a pretty unique form, once you learn it, and a unique bark as well. Bets of all, it’s basically the American version of a date! They grow these nice, plump little pink fruit that taste quite a bit like dates, can be dried like dates, and require no preparation to eat.
The downside: our furry neighbors love them almost (if not more) than we do.
Link to more info about the Persimmon:
- Persimmon Cookbook: http://members.aol.com/BLaneKY/persimm.htm
- Plant ID: http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=29 (Check out that juicy-looking berry!!!)
My wife and niece and I picked about five gals. of saskatoons today.
Gonna go looking for huckle berries tomorrow.
The red raspberries are coming on in our garden now and the thimbleberries are just starting to be pickable too, so we’re in berry heaven.
The choke cherries are loaded but still green.
My son & I gorged on black cap raspberries and thimbleberries the other day! 
I love the thimbleberries sooooo much. They don’t travel well, you gotta eat em as soon as you pull them off or they just fall apart. They have such rich, velvety red–the ultimate ephemeral treat.
Last year at the end of their season, I brought a bunch of dried up thimbleberries home to plant out back, then did something stupid like washed the pants with the pocketful of treasure. This time I just pooped all those seeds off to the sewage treatment plant. Ah, the dysfunction of the city. :-\
I love and favor black rasperries and thimbleberries a bunch too; last year I made a seven berry jam that had them both for main components that bursted with paleo yummyness. I forage both those berries salal and red huckle berries almost every year at Forest Park since I started loving and favoring them around 6 years ago. Fun Stuff, thanks for sharing your story. 8)
Been gorging on as many Saskatoons as I can eat for the past 2 weeks, there are tons of bushes around my campsite loaded with 'em. With little to no competition from animals or other humans, I’ve almost thought of setting up a little stand and selling them by the bucketful, but I’d rather eat them and share them with the family.
Wintergreen berries were traditionally harvested by the Pequot not too far from here, as one of their main berry harvests. They’re usually mixed with other fruits, as they’re not that juicy.
This is a great year for the low elevation huckleberries here! My wife and niece and I got two nice buckets full yesterday and will be going back out after supper today.
Saw some big purple bear poops in the patch we were picking too. They must be lovin’ it as much as me.
Im really a newbie at learning edible, inedible, and toxic berries so all this talk about them and resources online I look up is really overwhelming right now. Any advice on where to start studying?
I suggest that you start by learning a few that you can eat. Trying to memorize every berry there is, from a source that is not the actual berries, before you even start, that is not the natural way to do it. The natural way is to learn plants one at a time and develop a long-term relationship with them.
I suggest starting with Rose Hips. They are very common, they are unmistakable and there is no chance of confusing them with anything toxic (I take that back, you could mistakenly eat Rose Hips sprayed with insecticide, so stay away from ornamental Roses who are strangers to you), they are very nutritious, and, very important, they remain all winter so they are usually the only fresh fruit you can pick in the winter. But I have to tell you, the taste of Rose Hips varies incredibly, from kinda crappy to incredibly delicious. The slightly hairy seeds inside are usually discarded (if you swallow them, you will find out why the Shuswaps call them “itchy-bum berries”) but, in fact, Rose Hip seeds are one of the richest natural sources of vitamin E, as well as a small amount of protein and other nutrients, so I always do eat the seeds, chewing them as well as I can.
yeah, I hear you can grind them up into a powder too, I think that would work better instead of ‘itchy-bum-seeds’