Brambles are in season! What are brambles? Raspberries, blackberries, dewberries, swampberries, boysenberries, cloudberries, black caps, and any other wonderful members of the rose family that produce an aggregate berry. A recent trip to Kingston Point Park in Kingston, NY, had us eating almost everything we could pick.

The berries that grew at the point were what the locals here commonly call black caps. These are wild black raspberries. They are usually found on upright, thorny, raspberry canes, and look like a slightly smaller version of the commercial variety. The taste is excellent.

Amy and Alec found a nice stand of wild red raspberries, looking much like commercial ones, and a few bushes of the odd, maple-leafed, purple-flowering-raspberry near Esopus, NY. These are also upright plants and easy to locate. You can spot them well in advance in the Spring with their small, white, flowers. The purple flowering raspberry has a very showy rose-like purple flower.

Blackberries, dewberries, and swampberries, grow along runners tangled in the weeds. These berries have larger aggregrate parts than the raspberry-like fruits, just like store-bought blackberries.

The uses for these berries are endless. Fresh in a bowl with cream, or ice cream. Jam, preserves, jellies, or in a batch of my homemade yogurt are a few ideas for these wild gems. The dried leaves of raspberry and blackberry can be made into tea. Use 2 teaspoons of dried leaves per cup, and steep for 10 minutes in hot water. Raspberry leaf tea has been recommended for pregnant women for many years, and blackberry tea is used to relieve stomach and intestinal upset, and sore throat.

Cloudberries are a little harder to find, as they only grow wild in the far north. Looking like a yellow to orange raspberry, they grow on small plants four to ten inches high. Cloudberries have a unique tart flavor, and are very popular in Scandinavian cuisine. You can find them in North America in New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, Canada, and Alaska.

As always, please pick far from busy roads and other sources of pollution, and try to leave some for the birds, and other foragers. See you on the trail!