Those are (were) Simpson Stopper berries, a pleasant native edible. I set a little plate of them down on the mulch to take a photo… and suddenly was joined by a ravenous one-year-old… so I kept taking pictures.Last year I planted three of these bushes in my yard. This year, they each bore a little handful of fruit. Though they’re usually used as an ornamental hedge plant, the berries are pleasantly sweet with a bitter grapefruit aftertaste that I quite enjoy.
In a few years when the bushes mature, I’m totally making jam out of them.
Unless a baby gets them all first.
5 responses to “The Case of the Disappearing Berries”
Could be my favorite post yet. . . .
These were one of the first plants I added to the yard when we moved in, and I had no idea they had fruits edible to people. Awesome!
Babies have an instinctive knowledge of what's poisonous. I let the one-year-old try everything before the rest of us. That's how we originally discovered this tasty berry.
KIDDING!
The link to read more about this berry seems to need an update http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/simpson-stoppers-overlooked-edible/
I am reading back through all your posts. What about the Prepper Project posts? Those older posts that are meant to finish reading there, the links don’t seem to work for me.
We are gardening in Virginia and getting a lot of ideas from your website. Thank you!
Thanks, Gina. Yeah – I noticed that the Prepper Project has shuttered its site and is no more. I need to go back and cull those posts.