Service Berries
City-Kid Review:
Yum! Can we pick some more?
Lisa Jarnot, the beautiful and inspirational poet, knows Central Park and its nature secrets, better than anyone I know. It is thanks to her that I found out about the ubiquitous serviceberries. At least, they appeared ubiquitous to me once she had introduced me to them. Lisa initially introduced me to service berries growing in Central Park, close to the American Museum of Natural History. They were not quite fully ripe – more pink than blueish – but they were already small, fragrantly sweet taste explosions in my mouth.
Later, coming out of the subway on the way home, what did I see, but a Serviceberry tree. To my even greater surprise and delight, I discovered them growing in the courtyard of our building. Needless to say, City Kid and I had tremendous fun harvesting these deliciously blue-purple berries, eating as many as we dropped into bags. It is such a pleasure to see fresh berry juice drooling down City-Kid’s chin, along with berry-stained fingers.
But Are They Good For You?
According to Spark People, Serviceberries are loaded with Vitamin C and are an excellent source of Potassium. I have always understood Potassium to be one of the ‘happy’ minerals, and we were definitely happy harvesting these. Because they seem to grow everywhere in this city, are free and taste delicious, what’s not to be happy about?
A Berry by Any Other Name
Service berries are also known as June berries, probably because they ripen in, well, June. According to Wikipedia, it seems they go by several different names, some of them quite fun: Saskatoon, Shadbush or Shadwood, Wild Plum, Sarvis or Sarvisberry, Chuckley Pear and the, rather fancy, Amelanchier.
Harvest in the Big Apple
Serviceberries are a truly fun way of being a city scavenger and connecting to nature’s harvest without taking a foot outside the city; a way to learn that fruit can come from trees and not from a supermarket or farm-stand.
Happy harvesting!
Need to Knows:
Serviceberries seem to be quite common in NYC. It is essential to double-check the berries with an expert, before indulging.
I found this article about new Serviceberry trees in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Top-Tip
Serviceberries are similar to blueberries. You can freeze them, but they taste most fragrant when they are fresh.
Do you have Serviceberries growing near you? Have you tried Serviceberries? Let us know where they are. Please post in the comments section below.
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I must go check this out. I once went on a foraging tour in prospect park. It was such a cool adventure. I am sure my girls will love going to explore to find these berries. When do they bloom?
Do! They are sometimes called Juneberries, I believe, because of when they ripen. Last year we harvested between late May and early June. They are tastiest when they are deeply purple-blue. I know City Kid’s fingers turned purple from the delicious juice.
I love the idea of foraging in Prospect Park. I once did a foraging tour of parks in North London, at the crack of dawn. It was amazing. I saw the largest puffball mushroom I had ever seen in my life, in a north London cemetery!!