In my experience, most autumns the golden glow in the forest that is cast overhead by the wild cherry leaves begins in earnest by mid- to late August. This year, however, it didn’t begin where I live until this last week. We usually mark it as one of the first signs of fall.
Although you can find wild edibles all seasons of the year in the north country, autumn offers some of my favorites, if only because the colors at this time are everywhere so beautiful. The ripening berries of the American mountain ash accented by the golden leaves of the wild black cherry in this photo, for example. Both are edible. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission also lists the mountain ash as a medicinal in its Plants Used by the Great Lakes Ojibwa.
I’ve never eaten mountain ash berries but sources write of using them for jam or, if picked at a good time, even eating them fresh from the tree. Evidently freezing sweetens the fruit, and the berries will stay on the tree all winter.
Black bears, grouse and others eat the mountain ash, and the black cherry seems universally popular. I’ve seen flickers, chickadees, squirrels, chipmunks and others happily stuffing their cheeks or pecking at the cherries hanging in clusters from the trees.
When it comes to identifying whether a wild cherry is a black cherry tree or a choke cherry, I use a couple of maybe unorthodox methods that I talk about in the video. While the black cherry grows into a tree and the choke cherry does not, when the black cherry is young it can be hard to tell the difference, particularly as the black cherry will grow multiple shoots when young, especially when cut back (making it, I would think, a good candidate for coppicing). The fruit grows in the same way as well. Teresa Marrone in her Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan Wild Berries and Fruits writes that, unlike the choke cherry, the black cherry "has fine reddish hairs" on the leaf's underside along the base of the midrib -- she adds that they are visible with a lens. Although I accurately show the black cherry tree trunk and blossoms in the video, after re-consideration I believe the cherry I was actually eating was a choke cherry.
There are many other edibles offered in the fall as well, from manoomin or wild rice to cranberries and wild leeks. Some like the sheep sorrel and mountain ash also offer medicinal properties. Sheep sorrel, for example, is a key ingredient in the cancer-fighting essiac tea developed from Anishinaabe traditional knowledge.
A number of autumn’s wild edibles also offer their gifts in the spring and summer, as do the sheep sorrel and wild leeks. Others, such as the crabapple and wild apple, can vary according to the tree, species, and kind of weather we’ve had throughout the growing season.
Whatever their gifts, the plants’ generosity during this season of many colors treats us to a particularly edifying feast not only for the body but for the heart, mind and soul as well.
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