Tag: fruit

September 19th n- One of the odder fruits of the autumn is the snowberry. Serving only as bird food, this ornamental shrub, like firethorn, is often used for ornamentation in public parks, edge lands, industrial estate landscaping and so on.

As far as I can tell, the birds seem to like the white berries that make a distinctive popping sound when stepped on or thrown hard at the floor, and the bees certainly like the pink and white flowers, still very much in evidence on the same shrubs as the large, healthy-looking fruit.

Snowberry will grow with little attention needed and does look pretty, especially when dappled by dew, as these examples in the centre of Darlaston attest.

September 14th – A real sign of autumn, my first conker finds of the season, and this year it looks like there’s a large, voluminous crop waiting to fall to earth.

This tree, spotted in the backlanes of Stonnall was laden, and the fruit fresh from the husk as beautiful and shiny as ever one could wish, despite the tree being hard-hit by leaf miner.

Like most men, there is an inbuilt genetic urge to collect fallen conkers and I still can’t pass them in the road without popping a few in my pocket.

September 5th – A washout commute home, too. The traffic was murderous, I was tired and I wasn’t feeling the love. I took to the canals and cycleways, and wound my way back to sanctuary carefully and slowly.

In Goscote, I spotted a lovely apple tree, laden with rosy red fruit, glistening and dripping with fresh rain.

For a moment, I was spellbound by the sound and beauty.

Then I realised how wet I was, got back on the bike and rode home.

September 2nd – This year, as usual, I’m charged with foraging fruits and other goodies for the family winemaker, and precious jewels indeed are the sloes.

Thankfully on my ride out to The Roaches, I found a plentiful crop I’m not going to give the location of!

Thes dark red berries with the blue sheen, very similar in appearance to damsons make a lovely warming gin and are much prized.

A great find!

August 22nd – The Elderberry crop looks decent this year, which is always a good sign for local home-brew winemakers.

I will be out collecting buckets of these tiny back juice laden berries for a relative to perform the usual magic of transforming this bitter, black harvest into a dizzying, beautiful dark red nectar.

They also make a wonderful sight as a roll around the area. 

The oncoming autumn is lovely when you stop fighting it…

August 14th – Another tree I keep an eye on is the odd pear tree growing near the top of the bank between the canal and new pond at Clayhanger. I have no idea how it came to b there and suspect it sprouted from a discarded fruit core.

This small but dense tree usually fruits copiously, but this year is suffering terribly from blight and bird attack. The fruit on this tree have never looked appetising at all, to be honest.

An interesting thing though, and I’ll keep watching as it grows and develops over the years and hope that one day the harvest prospers. 

August 12th – One local treat I look forward to in late summer is local growing wild apples.

I don’t know who planted the row of fruit trees of different varieties which I discovered in a remote spot 10 years ago, but they tend to fruit copiously and the delicious apples, ungathered, rot on the ground. Every year for a decade, I’ve made a point of passing, checking the crop and gathering a pocketful. This year the russets are a little hard and tart, but the cox’s are delicious.

A lovely little local secret.

August 3rd – I’m amazed at the general variety between types of rosehips. I mentioned these sweet fruit of the rosebush on here a few days ago, and noticed today they were  developing at a fair pace now. They range from thin, almost yellow and small, to bright red, akin to a radish, like the one above, which is actually quite large. 

It’s interesting as there seems less variety in wild rose flowers than there seems to be in the seed fruit.

At this time in late summer they make for a welcome splash of colour, and will continue to be so until late autumn. A beautiful but slightly sad reminder that the season’s wheel continues to roll forward whether we like it or not.

August 2nd – Travelling to work on a miserable morning in steady rain, it was nice to continue the fruit-spotting with these glistening, deep red crabapples near Bughole Bridge in Darlaston.

Crabapples – bitter, hard miniature versions of the more palatable dessert fruit – come in many varieties from green through russet to deep, deep red like these. These fruits seem uninviting to almost everything and these will remain on the tree until well into the new year, and rot on the ground untouched by birds or squirrels.

They must be awfully acid, but they are so very handsome when new.