Forgot to pack some fresh fruit in your lunch?  Working outdoors in the West?  Here’s a few edible species I’ve encountered in Utah which are ripe at this time of year.  You generally do not need a permit to pick and eat fruit in-place on public land (but always check with your local office first!).

Don’t eat anything you cannot positively identify!

Amelanchier utahensis (Utah serviceberry) – In my experience, bland and mealy.  A. alnifolia is sweeter, juicier, and more flavorful (tastes of apple with faint blackberry) but I haven’t run across it in Utah yet!

Mahonia fremontii (Fremont barberry) – Generic fruit flavor, not terribly distinctive.  Fruits are mostly hollow inside, but the flesh is sweeter and less sour than that of M. repens.

Mahonia repens (Oregon grape) – Reminiscent of grape flavor.  Sour.  Sweeter later in the year especially after a frost.

Ribes cereum (Wax currant) – Mild currant flavor with a hint of melon.  Ripe berries are less intensely colored and more orange/less red than R. montigenum.  Dried remnants of the inflorescence often adhere to the bottom of the fruit — just eat the whole thing.  Plants have smooth stems without prickles.

Ribes montigenum (Mountain gooseberry) – Strong, sweet currant flavor when at their peak.  Berries are deep translucent red when ripe.  The berries have thin, erect hairs which can be visually off-putting, but the hairs do not pose a problem to your mouth.  The plants, however, are quite prickly — pick your berries carefully.

Prunus virginiana (Chokecherry) – Generally sour/astringent even when ripe, but some berries could almost be called sweet later in the year.  Don’t mistake these berries for those of Sambucus racemosa (Red elderberry), which is toxic unless cooked.

Rubus strigosus (Wild raspberry) – Not pictured.  When ripe these are usually half the size or less of those you might find in a store, but just as tasty.

To reduce contamination from animals, I don’t pick berries on bushes growing on an animal trail or path.  I also discard berries which are rotten or have signs of insect damage.

Like many of us, my workdays are spent collecting seed for Seeds of Success.  I enjoy working with my fellow intern, Andrew, and we’re learning a lot about the local flora.  However, on the weekends it’s another story altogether: our focus shifts from the Plant Kingdom to the Mineral Kingdom.  Utah is a rockhounding paradise!  There are about a dozen sedimentary layers exposed at different elevations as well as scattered igneous dikes/sills.  We’ve got mudstone, sandstone, conglomerates, breccia, you name it from aeolian, marine, and freshwater deposits (both lacustrine and fluvial).

A lot of what we pick up is chert on the surface, weathered out of the sedimentary deposits, but we’ve also found a few veins of chert in situ.  Beyond crystals and minerals, there are also plenty of opportunities for invertebrate fossils, if that’s your thing.

We’ve been getting a lot of use out of a geology pick as well as a set of cold chisels and a sledgehammer.  Last weekend we spent a day doing hard labor, breaking rocks hoping to find amethyst/bixbyite in vugs in rhyolite boulders.  Found a few tiny specimens worth keeping, but most of the fun is in the attempt rather than the result!