Baked Apple Berry, Cloud Berry, and Salmon Berry

Baked Apple Berry, Cloud Berry (Rubus Chamaemorus)- and Salmon Berry(Rubus spectilis): Although the two are often confused: 
Baked-apple-Cloud-berry is a low creeping, raspberry, with a sweet, golden-amber coloured berry; that some claim tastes like baked apple. It is found in peat bogs and muskeg; and grows 2-6 inches high. the flowers are white. Baked -Apple/ Cloud Berries have twice as much vitamin C by volume as an orange and were an important food to combat scurvy. Traditionally, these summer fruits were stored in seal pokes(containers made by cleaning, inflating, and drying a complete sealskin)wooden barrels, or underground caches in cold water or oil, with other berries; or with edible greens.

Photos of Baked Apple/Cloud Berry plants –

 flowering and berries

 IMAGES ARE LICENSED FOR USE THROUGH THE LINKS SHOWN BELOW EACH. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rubus_chamaemorus_LC0151.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cloudberry-cropped.jpg

 The final product as a tasteful berry (as you can see in the photo above).

The cloudberry plant (Rubus chamaemorus), or bakeapple as it is called some places, is slow growing sub-arctic specie that is a very important berry. In northern Norway. Cloudberries are mainly used as jam, with whipped cream, in cakes and some even make alcoholic drinks out of the berries.

Salmon Berry (Rubus spectilis):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rubus_spectabilis_1564.JPG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Salmonberry.jpg
Is a much taller raspberry,with reddish flowers and fruit that varies from red to yellow. If the forager indeed knew the difference, it is claimed that unlike Baked Apple/Cloud Berries Salmonberry and shoots there of were almost always eaten fresh because they where so juicy that they did not preserve well The shoots are still peeled, and enjoyed raw,  steamed, or quickly scalded and wilted as  an early vegetable.. Like Blackberries, the Salmonberry is very invasive.. Salmon Berry, like all the Rubus group are highly edible and nutritious.

Blackberries and raspberries (Rubus spp.) can resemble poison ivy, with which they may share territory; however, blackberries and raspberries almost always have thorns on their stems, whereas poison ivy stems are smooth(Like Thimble Berry). Also, the three-leaflet pattern of some blackberry and raspberry leaves changes as the plant grows: Leaves produced later in the season have five leaflets rather than three. Blackberries and raspberries have many fine teeth along the leaf edge, the top surface of their leaves is very wrinkled where the veins are, and the bottom of the leaves is light minty-greenish white. Poison ivy is all green. The stem of poison ivy is brown and cylindrical, while blackberry and raspberry stems can be green, can be squared in cross-section, and can have prickles. Raspberries and blackberries are never truly vines; that is, they do not attach to trees to support their stems.

©Al (Alex-Alexander) D Girvan All rights Reserved.