Tree Identification

Regenerative Subsistence Flora Food & Medicine
#1

There’s a bunch of small trees on my parents’ land that have formed a nice, solid thicket in the past few years. They produce a ton of berries, and I’m not entirely sure what they are. I took a few pictures, and hopefully someone more knowledgeable will give me good news and tell me it’s something edible. Years ago, I had guessed that they might be a type of flowering dogwood, but they also seem similar to autumn-olives or russian-olives.

EDIT: After a bunch of research online, I’m almost entirely sure it’s autumn-olive. I think I’ll wait to get a second opinion before I start chomping down, though.

#2

Definitely some sort of Elaeagnus Spp.

The berries look like they’re ripe too.

#3

Having gotten a few opinions also saying it’s Elaeagnus, I tried some of the fruit. Still a bit tart, but good!

I was told it might also be a type bred specifically for high yields.

#4

I just tasted my first autumn olive yesterday, and it looked just like that! Penny Scout ID’d it for us–she called it invasive on the east coast, but I don’t think it grows native (or very much at all–we found it in an arboretum) here in Cascadia.

Silvery leaf backs and all–cool! :smiley:

#5

Yesterday myself and my partner, and today her and her brother, spent less than an hour each day gathering autumn olive. In this brief time, we’ve gathered around 8 pounds a trip, and have still barely made a scratch in the plants we found out near her house. Invasive-alicious!

I expect we’ll be making regular trips to gather them in the next week.

#6

Wow! what do you plan to do with all that?

Most of what I gathered went straight into my mouth, some into salads, but they might taste good in a chutney type thing, like you’d use cranberries. Maybe even fermented! yum.

Or dried for later?

OK, so now that you’ve got yours figured out, I have a mystery tree I’ve found around the neighborhoods. Leaves look like dogwood to me, but the fruits don’t resemble any of the cornus varieties I find in the books. They taste kinda cherryish, tart but sweet and tasty, smaller than a cherry and a bit oblong, with one large oblong pit. I found a cornelian cherry tree once, and the berries seemed ripe but I had to spit them out! These taste very different.

#7

We plan to basically do everything we can think of with them, since we have so many to pick. We’re going to make jam, jelly, preserves, fruit leather, etc. We’ve already made some fruit leather and pumpkin autumn-olive muffins.

#8

My partner and I have found a bunch of nuts that we think are a type of acorn on a local trail. The leaves don’t look like most of the oaks we have around here, but still like they easily could be oaks. I took a picture of a few of the nuts, and was hoping someone might be able to give me a hint as to what they are, since a couple hours of googling and wikipedia haven’t helped much.

#9

hmmm, yeeeaah, they look like acorns (w/o caps) to me. Any chance of a pic of a leaf?

also, have you pulled one apart?

#10

Yea, the insides look a lot like other acorns I’ve opened up. On the path we found them on, we found a few small caps, which is one of the main things that made us think acorns, despite them not looking like most of the other ones in the area. I got a couple leaf pictures on my cellphone (my hated enemy), but I don’t know how to put them on the computer from there. I’ll get some pictures of the leaves on a real camera next week, since I plan to lead a foraging walk there and want to check on it beforehand.

I was really surprised at the variety of oaks out there when trying to look this stuff up. I thought I was pretty savvy about major food sources like oaks, but never realized the variety of leaf shapes in some of the species. Always more to learn!

#11

DEFINITLY acorns. Ai know of too many round acorns to be fooled by the change in shape. How do the leaves differ from the other oaks in your area? Do you have a lot of wavy-leaved oaks or round-leaved?