11 Edible Berries on 1 hike, BC is Berry Country
Howdy plant lovers and especially all you Wild Food and Foraging Types
I went on a wildcrafting trip yesterday up to the Whistler region (Cal-Cheak) and I'm just SO excited to share what we found!We were headed for one of my favourite little plants and definitely the most used herb in my apothecary: Eyebright, Euphrasia officinalis. It's a fantastic anti-histamine and enormous relief to acute allergies.We did find the small patch, BUT that turned out not to be the highlight of the trip... 
BERRIES! BERRIES! EVERYWHERE!Here's a snap shot of the bucket, while not super full (lots of snacking) and a little blurry, it shows a variety of berries. In the end we counted 11 different edible berries that we ate! And that we growing in a 1 km distance.Not all of them made it to the salad, I'll confess. The Thimbleberries, for example, never even made it into the bucket. Have you ever eaten them? wow! so delicate and soooo delicious.and then on the other end of the scale, we did not include Highbush Cranberry, Viburnum edule, in the salad. This fruit is technically edible and quite nutritious, i find it borders the unpalatable.So here's the list...
- black huckleberry
- red huckleberry
- blueberry
- blackaps
- raspberries
- saskatoon berries
- thimbleberries
- salmonberries
- highbush cranberry
- wild strawberries
- twisted stalk berries
My aim this season was to increase the diversity of my diet by 75-100 plants. and in just 1 4 hr hike, I got 11 of them. The abundance of the plant world truly and repeatedly astounds me.Oh, and if you've never tried a twisted stalk berry, they're really cool. They taste like watermelon. it's incredible! and they're ripe right now. so if you can get out to the woods on the north shore or somewhere untouched for the past few decades, you'll likely find it.
Here's a pic to help with id...Alright, that's it for me today. Enjoy the Sun everyone! May your foraging be rich and full!