Nothing quite like popping these puppies out of their husk and straight into your waiting mouth. I discovered over the summer that this plant grows very well in a container on a baking hot deck in the city so I’d definitely suggest it for other urbanites looking for a highly productive food crop that’s versatile in the kitchen. That’s the tasty candy-like Physalis pruinosa or ground cherry that I’ve featured in this recipe, and this recipe, and this recipe in the past. In addition to the Cornus mas fruit, there’s another oddball cherry in this post. Make a note of where you saw it and revisit that plant in the fall to see if it has these fruit on it. My best advice to you, considering they’re over for this year already anyway, is to pay attention in the spring for any bright yellow flowering shrubs/trees that aren’t a forsythia bush. It can be a little challenging to identify a Cornus mas if you didn’t plant it yourself. The tree I was picking from was actually right next to three others, two of which weren’t even close to being ready and one that had already passed, the birds having stripped it clean. Still it’s worth the work to give this new “alternative edible” a try.Ĭornelian cherries are available in the fall, usually in September, though different trees ripen up at different times, depending on the little microclimate surrounding that particular tree. The only real drawback to using cornelian cherries is the pesky pit – just like a regular cherry – that requires an extra processing step to remove. Instead, cook it up into sauces and jam with a sizable scoop of sugar, and it’s a suitable stand-in for any recipe using the more popular cranberry. It has a decidedly tart taste so it’s not very good eaten raw. While the fruit, called cornelian cherries, is pretty small (about the size of a skinny cranberry) it is very prolific so it’s not hard to pick a hefty pail’s worth quickly. As it turns out, this pretty plant also bears some delicious ruby red fruit. Normally this oversized shrub or undersized tree, depending on how you look at it, is use solely for its glorious sunshiny display of yellow flowers in very early spring when nothing else is in bloom or even green for that matter. One of the plants/fruit we studied was Cornus mas or cornelian cherry. It was a very fun class that opened my eyes up to a lot of new “alternative edibles” and reminded me of a few I’d eaten a lot as a kid but hadn’t thought of in quite awhile. This autumn I was taking an interesting and unique class in edible ornamental plants - in other words, eating things you usually put in the landscape to make it look pretty.
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