From Charly, Aronia melanocarpa, also known as Black Chokeberry. Beautiful! click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
From Charly, Aronia melanocarpa, also known as Black Chokeberry. Beautiful! click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.
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Lovely!! Walking past these trees on the street is like passing through a wave of delicious sweetness.
I love it when they bloom so much, they look like snowdrifts, and the falling petals are a blizzard.
They are so beautiful! I’d never heard of them before.
My flora says they originate in America, east of Great Lakes. Common ornamental in Northern Europe.
IME, their fruits are nice to suck and spit, but eating them leaves a strong tannine taste.
You can make a great wine from the berries, too. Apparently they’re good for lowering blood pressure (folk medicine?), but we had a batch a couple of years ago -- dee-lishussss!
@lumipuna
If you first freeze them and eat them only after de-freezing again, they lose significant part of their bitterness.
@rq
We have not tried that, mom is effectively a teetotaler, father has had kidney stones and has a lifelong ban on vines and I am not a fan of vine either. So we only use them as a substitute for blueberries in baked pies. It works great, only you have to remember to freeze them first and not use fresh fruit. And a little more sugar than would be needed for blueberries.
Personally I prefer harvesting serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.), another American berry bush commonly planted in my local public settings. However I also like occasionally snatching a small handful of chokeberries in autumn and sucking them to get a “fresh” taste in my mouth.