Zone 4 gallery
297 species in the database survive zone 4.
hardy kiwi / kiwiberry
Actinidia arguta
Kiwiberry — sweet, aromatic, grape-sized, eaten whole skin and all. The most cold-hardy commercially relevant kiwi (to roughly zone 4), which is also why it readily escapes cultivation in parts of the US Northeast — see spread warning. Fruit color ranges from green to greenish-yellow through to a form with fully purple-red skin, colouring best in full sun — this purple form circulates in the trade as "Actinidia purpurea" or "A. arguta var. purpurea," but POWO treats it as a synonym of this species, not a distinct taxon.
arctic kiwi
Actinidia kolomikta
Sweet-tart, smooth-skinned berries eaten whole — genuinely popular as a fresh fruit in Russia. Grown in the West at least as much for its striking pink/white/green variegated foliage as for its fruit.
silver vine / cat kiwi
Actinidia polygama
Silver vine — genuinely the most cat-attractive plant studied, eliciting a response in roughly 70–80% of domestic cats (vs. ~67% for catnip), including many cats catnip doesn't affect; sold commercially as dried 'matatabi' sticks/powder for cat enrichment. The compounds responsible (actinidine, dihydroactinidiolide and others) are chemically distinct from catnip's nepetalactone. Fruit is genuinely edible but not very palatable raw — traditionally pickled in salt or miso, fried, or made into jam and liquor once ripe; unripe fruit is used for pickles. High in vitamin C.
European black elder
Sambucus nigra
⚠ MUST BE COOKED — raw berries, leaves and stems are toxic. Native across Europe and western Asia and naturalized well beyond it, this fast-growing hedgerow shrub bears flat-topped clusters of small, glossy black-purple berries — sweeter and less rank than some American elders — traditionally cooked down for cordial, wine and jam.
American elder
Sambucus nigra subsp. canadensis
⚠ MUST BE COOKED — raw berries, leaves and stems are toxic. This is the elder native to eastern North America, forming dense, fast-spreading thickets along streams and forest edges; its dark purple-black berries, borne in broad, flat clusters up to 25 cm across, are the type most widely grown for elderberry syrup, wine and jam in the US.
squashberry / mooseberry
Viburnum edule
Fruit is a tart, juicy red drupe, edible raw once fully ripe — the flesh is pleasant but each has a large, flattened stone and a musky odor that some find off-putting, so it is more often cooked into jelly or sauce than eaten out of hand.
nannyberry
Viburnum lentago
Fruit ripens to a bluish-black, sweet, raisin-like pulp over a single flattened stone — good eaten fresh off the shrub once fully ripe, though the thick skin and large seed limit it mostly to jam, sauce, or leather.
guelder rose
Viburnum opulus
Fruit is bitter and mildly toxic raw, causing nausea or stomach upset if eaten in quantity — it needs cooking (as jelly or sauce) to be palatable, unlike the unrelated Sambucus elderberry, and birds eat it untroubled straight off the bush. ⚠ Raw fruit is mildly toxic — cook it.
blackhaw
Viburnum prunifolium
Genuinely edible raw, unlike most viburnums in this catalog — no cooking required and no known toxicity. Quality varies by individual plant: the best have thin, sweet, date- or prune-like flesh with a faint smoky note, while others lean bitter and astringent and are better suited to preserves. Best picked after the first frost, which sweetens it. Leaves have also been used for tea.
perennial onions
Allium spp.
Onion/garlic flavour; leaf and bulb. Welsh onion, chives, ramps.
fragrant sumac
Rhus aromatica
Sumac — a souring SPICE (lemony), not a dessert fruit. ⚠ Know your sumac: the red-fruited Rhus in this entry are safe, but poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) is a wetland shrub with drooping WHITE fruit and causes severe dermatitis. Red and upright, fine; white and drooping, leave it.
smooth sumac
Rhus glabra
Sumac — a souring SPICE (lemony), not a dessert fruit. ⚠ Know your sumac: red upright fruit clusters are Rhus and safe; poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) has drooping white fruit and causes severe dermatitis.
staghorn sumac
Rhus typhina
Sumac — a souring SPICE (lemony), not a dessert fruit. Tart red drupes for 'sumac-ade'; suckers freely. ⚠ Know your sumac: red upright fruit clusters are Rhus and safe; poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) has drooping white fruit and causes severe dermatitis.
pawpaw
Asimina triloba
Custard texture; banana-mango-pineapple — excellent, but poor shelf life. ⚠ Eat the flesh only — the skin and seeds concentrate annonacin, a neurotoxic acetogenin, and are not food. A minority of people get stomach upset from the flesh too; try a little first.
American spikenard
Aralia racemosa
Ripe berries, cooked, are used for jam or wine — sources genuinely disagree on how palatable they are raw, and eating a quantity of them raw can cause digestive upset, so cook them. The heavily aromatic root is not a food; it's used medicinally and, historically, as a root-beer flavoring.
asparagus
Asparagus officinalis
Young emerging spears eaten raw or cooked — the entire crop; grassy-sweet. ⚠ The red berries on female plants are not edible (mildly toxic) — only the spears are food.
false Solomon's seal
Maianthemum racemosum
Ripe red berries edible in moderation, cooked or as jelly — raw berries have a laxative, cathartic effect in quantity. Young shoots are cooked and eaten like asparagus in some regions. ⚠ Also worth knowing: young shoots are easily confused with those of the toxic false hellebore (Veratrum) — check for the alternate, distinctly parallel-veined leaves before cutting anything.
chicory
Cichorium intybus
Roots roasted and ground as a coffee substitute; forced blanched shoots (chicons) and young leaves eaten as a bitter salad or cooked green; flowers edible.
sunchoke / Jerusalem artichoke
Helianthus tuberosus
Sunchoke — nutty, sweet, crisp. Excellent, but notoriously gas-forming.
dandelion
Taraxacum officinale
Whole plant edible — young leaves as a bitter salad or cooked green, roots roasted as a coffee substitute, flowers used for wine and syrup.
common barberry
Berberis vulgaris
Sharp, tart — mostly for jelly; barberry dried as a spice. Sold dried in Persian cooking as zereshk, used whole in rice dishes like zereshk polo.
creeping Oregon grape
Mahonia repens
Sharp, tart — mostly for jelly; barberry dried as a spice.
yellow birch
Betula alleghaniensis
Spring sap tapped for syrup — higher mineral content than sugar maple sap; prized alongside paper birch in North American sap traditions.
sweet / black birch
Betula lenta
Spring sap tapped for syrup, and classically for wintergreen-flavoured birch beer.
river birch
Betula nigra
⚠ Honestly: can be tapped, but sap sugar is lower than the other birches here — worth tapping only if it's what you already have; paper, yellow and silver birch are better choices.
paper birch
Betula papyrifera
Spring sap tapped for syrup — the classic North American sap birch; under 1% sugar, but the sweetest of the birches here. A large volume of sap is needed per litre of syrup.
silver birch
Betula pendula
Spring sap tapped for syrup or drunk fresh — around 2.5% sugar; the standard European tapping birch.
downy birch
Betula pubescens
Spring sap tapped for syrup or drunk fresh — around 2.6% sugar, comparable to silver birch.
American hazelnut
Corylus americana
A thicket-forming, multi-stemmed native shrub of eastern North America, valued both for small sweet nuts and as a key breeding source of eastern filbert blight resistance for cold-hardy hazelnut cultivars.
European hazelnut / cobnut
Corylus avellana
The classic European hazelnut/cobnut of commerce — the source of most culinary and orchard cultivars, cultivated for centuries across Europe for its rich, oily, sweet-flavored kernel eaten raw, roasted, or pressed for oil.
Turkish tree hazel
Corylus colurna
The tallest and most tree-like of the cultivated hazels — a single-trunked 'tree hazel' from southeast Europe and western Asia, grown mainly as an ornamental or street tree for its formal pyramidal habit and corky bark, with thick-shelled nuts similar in flavor to common hazelnut but smaller.
beaked hazelnut
Corylus cornuta
North America's wild 'beaked' hazelnut, named for the long, bristly, tubular husk that encloses the nut — smaller-nutted than European hazelnut, with a thin shell and sweet, well-flavored kernel.
Asian / Siberian hazel
Corylus heterophylla
A cold-hardy, many-stemmed shrub of northeast Asian forests whose small, thin-shelled, sweet-flavored nuts — unusually for a hazel — fall free of their shallow, bell-shaped husks at ripeness; valued by breeders for its frequent resistance to eastern filbert blight.
Japanese hazel
Corylus sieboldiana
A very cold-hardy shrub — with an even hardier northern variety extending across northeast China, Korea, Japan and eastern Siberia — bearing small egg-shaped nuts fully enclosed in a bristly, tubular husk two to three times the nut's length, and showing good field resistance to eastern filbert blight.
sea kale
Crambe maritima
Sea kale — blanched shoots, mild and nutty.
claret-cup hedgehog cactus
Echinocereus triglochidiatus
Small red-purple fleshy fruit, edible and among the better-flavoured hedgehog-cactus fruits — a trailside snack rather than a harvest crop. ⚠ Brush off the fine deciduous spines before handling. They are spines, not glochids — Echinocereus has none of the barbed bristles that make an Opuntia fruit a nuisance to pick.
beehive cactus
Escobaria vivipara
Small greenish fruit, edible but minor — grown mainly for the pink flowers rather than for the fruit.
brittle prickly pear
Opuntia fragilis
Prickly-pear fruit sweet and seedy; young pads as a vegetable. ⚠ Glochids.
eastern prickly pear
Opuntia humifusa
The most cold-hardy and northerly-ranging Opuntia in eastern North America — remarkably for a cactus, it survives outdoors as far north as coastal Massachusetts and a small population at Point Pelee, Ontario, right on Lake Erie. Its red fruit is edible, used fresh or in jams and candies. ⚠ Glochids.
plains prickly pear
Opuntia macrorhiza
Named for its large, tuberous roots (macrorhiza, "big root"), which store water and let the plant survive extended drought and hard freezes on the open plains; its reddish-purple, spineless fruit is fleshy and edible. ⚠ Glochids.
tulip prickly pear
Opuntia phaeacantha
Called tulip prickly pear for its showy, often red-centered yellow flowers; it forms large dense thickets in the wild and its purplish, pink-fleshed fruit is fleshy and seedy. ⚠ Glochids.
hairspine prickly pear
Opuntia polyacantha
One of the most cold-hardy and widely distributed Opuntia in North America, ranging from Chihuahua, Mexico north through the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states into Alberta and Saskatchewan, with a disjunct population found in Ontario's Thousand Islands in 2018 — it is one of only two cactus species native to Canada. ⚠ Glochids.
twisted-spine prickly pear
Opuntia tortispina
Despite its name, the spirally twisted spines implied by "tortispina" are not actually characteristic of this species; it appears to be of hybrid origin between O. macrorhiza and O. polyacantha, showing intermediate traits from both parents. ⚠ Glochids.
common hackberry
Celtis occidentalis
Hackberry — thin, sweet, date-like pulp on a hard seed.
blue honeysuckle / honeyberry / haskap
Lonicera caerulea
Sweet-tart, blueberry-meets-raspberry — good fresh and processed. ⚠ Worth knowing at genus level: haskap is one of the few honeysuckles that is good to eat. Many Lonicera berries are emetic or toxic, so this is not a genus to forage on a family resemblance — identify to species.
pink honeysuckle
Lonicera hispida
A high-altitude Central Asian and Himalayan honeysuckle, not a haskap. It carries ovoid yellowish-to-red berries, but its edibility is not well documented in the sources consulted — treat it as unverified rather than assume the blue-honeysuckle character of its cultivated relatives.
mountain fly honeysuckle
Lonicera villosa
The North American mountain fly honeysuckle, and a genuine close relative of haskap — botanists still argue whether it is a separate species or a subspecies of Lonicera caerulea. Small blue berries, sweet-tart and edible like haskap, though smaller and borne more sparsely than the selected cultivars. ⚠ Worth knowing at genus level: this and haskap are among the few edible honeysuckles. Many Lonicera berries are emetic or toxic — identify to species rather than trusting the genus.
bunchberry
Cornus canadensis
⚠ Honestly: mild, faintly sweet, soft/mealy "pudding-berry" — pleasant but bland fresh; better cooked into jam or pudding. Grown as much as a groundcover as for fruit. Unripe berries may cause mild stomach upset; pulp and stone are hard to separate.
cornelian cherry
Cornus mas
Tart — cranberry meets sour cherry; astringent unripe, best cooked.
Asiatic cornelian cherry
Cornus officinalis
Cornelian cherry: tart, cranberry-meets-sour-cherry — best cooked.
American persimmon
Diospyros virginiana
Diospyros virginiana ("American persimmon") is the cold-hardiest species in the genus, forming root-suckering colonies in the wild and bearing smaller fruit (2-6 cm) that is intensely harsh and astringent while green but turns rich and honey-sweet once fully soft — typically after autumn frost. Unlike Diospyros kaki, there are no widely grown non-astringent ("Fuyu"-type) American persimmon cultivars, so the astringent-until-soft pattern applies to essentially all of them.
Russian olive
Elaeagnus angustifolia
Dry and mealy rather than juicy, but genuinely sweet once fully ripe — astringent if picked even slightly early. Eaten fresh once ripe, or made into jelly and preserves.
American silverberry
Elaeagnus commutata
The least palatable fresh-eating fruit of this catalog's Elaeagnus — dry, mealy and quite astringent unless fully ripe, and not particularly enjoyable raw even then. Birds take it readily; for people it's really a cooked fruit, used in jelly and soup, or historically fried in fat.
goumi
Elaeagnus multiflora
Goumi/autumn olive — pleasantly tart-sweet when fully ripe; good for jam.
autumn olive
Elaeagnus umbellata
Goumi/autumn olive — pleasantly tart-sweet when fully ripe; good for jam.
sea buckthorn / seaberry
Hippophae rhamnoides
⚠ Intensely acidic — not fresh eating; for juice, oil and syrup. Very high vitamin C.
Tibetan sea buckthorn
Hippophae tibetana
⚠ Intensely acidic — not for fresh eating; juice, oil and syrup. Very high vitamin C.
silver buffaloberry
Shepherdia argentea
⚠ Honestly: bitter and saponin-rich — an acquired taste, poor fresh.
russet buffaloberry
Shepherdia canadensis
⚠ Honestly: bitter and saponin-rich; whipped into 'Indian ice cream' — an acquired taste, poor fresh.
bearberry
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
Bearberry — dry and mealy; mostly for cooking.
crowberry
Empetrum nigrum
Crowberry — bland and watery; a famine/curiosity food.
wintergreen
Gaultheria procumbens
Wintergreen — medicinal/methyl-salicylate flavour; a curiosity. ⚠ The berries and a light leaf tea are fine, but wintergreen essential oil is a different matter: it is concentrated methyl salicylate and is genuinely toxic in small amounts, especially to children. Do not treat the oil as a flavouring.
black huckleberry
Gaylussacia baccata
Blueberry sweet; lingonberry/cranberry tart (cook); bilberry intense but tiny.
lowbush blueberry
Vaccinium angustifolium
The true wild blueberry of Maine and Atlantic Canada — smaller-fruited and more intensely flavored than highbush, traditionally harvested from sprawling rhizome colonies ("barrens") rather than grown as individual planted bushes.
northern highbush blueberry
Vaccinium corymbosum
The dominant commercial blueberry worldwide — most supermarket blueberries are highbush cultivars or their hybrids. Large, sweet-tart fruit with the classic dusty-blue bloom on the skin.
Cascade blueberry
Vaccinium deliciosum
A true wild huckleberry of high Cascade meadows, foraged rather than farmed — described by foragers as sugary sweet with a notably rich aroma when fully ripe.
American cranberry
Vaccinium macrocarpon
The commercial cranberry — tart, firm, red berries grown on sandy, highly acidic bogs and almost always eaten cooked or processed rather than raw. Bogs are flooded for harvest and frost protection, not because the plant is aquatic.
mountain huckleberry
Vaccinium membranaceum
The classic wild-harvested huckleberry of the Pacific Northwest, prized for large, dark purple-black, well-flavored fruit — and prized specifically because it can't be reliably farmed; nearly all of it is hand-picked from wild stands.
European bilberry
Vaccinium myrtillus
A wild European heathland fruit with a long culinary and folk tradition — eaten raw with cream or made into jams, tarts and Sweden's blåbärssoppa (bilberry soup); its dark, staining juice is more intensely flavored than cultivated blueberry.
oval-leaf blueberry
Vaccinium ovalifolium
A boreal and subalpine wild blueberry of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, forming dense thickets; the fruit is mildly tart yet sweet and dries to a raisin-like flavor — an important wild food though little grown.
European cranberry
Vaccinium oxycoccos
A wild, circumboreal bog cranberry — the smaller-fruited European counterpart of the commercially grown American cranberry (V. macrocarpon), foraged across Northern and Eastern Europe and used the same way, in preserves and sauces.
Kamchatka cranberry
Vaccinium praestans
A low, creeping shrub from the Russian Far East and Japan with unusually large, sweet, fragrant fruit for the genus — rare in cultivation, introduced to the West by the plant-hunter Ernest Wilson in 1914.
bog bilberry
Vaccinium uliginosum
A circumboreal arctic-alpine bilberry, historically the most popular foraged fruit for Native communities around Fort Yukon, Alaska; blue-black berries with a bluish bloom, used in jams, jellies and pies.
lingonberry
Vaccinium vitis-idaea
Lingonberry — sharply tart, classically served as a jam or sauce with Scandinavian meatballs, pork or game; its unusually high benzoic acid content gives it a long shelf life that made it a valued preserved fruit long before refrigeration.
hybrid bilberry
Vaccinium × intermedium
A genuine but rare natural hybrid of bilberry and lingonberry, combining traits of both parents — partially evergreen foliage, dark violet berries, and reduced but not absent fertility. Essentially unknown outside botanical and specialty-collector contexts.
groundnut
Apios americana
Starchy tubers cooked (boiled, roasted, fried) — a nutty, potato-like staple with roughly three times potato's protein; young pods, shoots and flowers also edible cooked. Tubers best harvested autumn to spring after 2+ seasons; borne like beads strung along the rhizome.
Siberian pea shrub
Caragana arborescens
⚠ Honestly: young seeds and pods are edible cooked but bland — an emergency/fallback food and poultry fodder rather than a treat. Cook the seeds (reported to contain the amino-acid analogue L-canavanine; eat in moderation); nitrogen-fixing.
honey locust
Gleditsia triacanthos
The crop is the sweet sticky pulp inside the long pods — chewed straight from the pod, or used to sweeten and flavour drinks. The hard seeds are not eaten. ⚠ Do not confuse this with Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus), whose raw seeds are toxic. The wild type is savagely thorny; buy a named thornless form for a garden.
American chestnut
Castanea dentata
Once a dominant eastern-US canopy tree reaching 30 m with the sweetest-tasting nuts of any chestnut species, American chestnut was reduced to near-extinction in the wild within a few decades of the early-1900s blight epidemic, and most survivors today are root-collar sprouts that die back long before they can bear fruit.
Chinese chestnut
Castanea mollissima
The most chestnut-blight-resistant species in the genus and the genetic backbone of modern American chestnut restoration breeding, forming a broad-crowned tree that begins bearing in 5-7 years and can yield roughly 25-60 kg of nuts a year once mature.
American beech
Fagus grandifolia
Triangular beechnuts edible, sweet, between pine nut and almond — best lightly roasted; the oil can be pressed. ⚠ Raw beechnuts contain fagin and oxalic acid; eating many raw can cause headache and nausea — eat only in moderation or roast.
European beech
Fagus sylvatica
Triangular beechnuts edible, sweet and nutty — best lightly roasted; F. sylvatica is higher in fagin than the American species. ⚠ Raw beechnuts contain fagin and oxalic acid — eat only in moderation or roast; a longer roast gives a coffee substitute.
white oak
Quercus alba
Acorns edible after leaching out bitter tannins; white oak acorns are naturally sweeter and lower in tannin than red oaks, needing less leaching.
swamp white oak
Quercus bicolor
Acorns edible after leaching out bitter tannins; a white-oak-group acorn, comparatively sweet and easy to process.
bur oak
Quercus macrocarpa
Acorns edible only after leaching out bitter tannins in water, then ground into flour or roasted. Bur oak is in the low-tannin white-oak group and among the easiest, sweetest acorns.
English oak
Quercus robur
Acorns edible after leaching out bitter tannins, ground into flour or roasted — moderate tannin, needs thorough leaching.
alpine currant
Ribes alpinum
Fruit is red and translucent like a redcurrant but bland and insipid — this is grown almost entirely as a tough, shearable ornamental hedge shrub, not for eating.
American blackcurrant
Ribes americanum
A true wild black currant of eastern and central North America — smooth, low-fat, high-sugar berries used historically for jam, jelly and pie.
golden currant
Ribes aureum
Showy, clove-scented yellow spring flowers as much as a fruit crop — sweet amber-to-black berries used historically for jam, jelly and pemmican.
wax currant
Ribes cereum
A tough, drought-adapted mounding shrub of the dry interior West; fruit used for jam, jelly, pie and historically pemmican.
American gooseberry
Ribes hirtellum
The wild parent of nearly all North American gooseberry cultivars — smooth-skinned fruit, smaller than European types but hardier and healthier, good fresh or in jam and pie.
Hudson Bay currant
Ribes hudsonianum
Black fruit that's notably bitter eaten raw — worth growing for jam and jelly rather than fresh eating.
prickly currant
Ribes lacustre
Dark purple-black fruit, tart and very juicy, described as having an "agreeable flavour when fully ripe" — but the crushed foliage and fruit have a distinctly skunky smell, and the densely bristly, prickly stems make this more of a wildlife thicket plant than a garden fruit crop.
Korean currant
Ribes maximowiczianum
⚠ Genuinely under-documented — secondary sources describing this species may be conflating it with the closely related R. maximowiczii or R. ussuriense, and no reliable flavor or culinary information was found. One source notes Jeju Island (Korea) populations have been studied for antioxidant properties, but that's a research mention, not a garden fact. Native-range and cultivation claims here should be treated as tentative pending verification against a primary source like POWO or GBIF.
blackcurrant
Ribes nigrum
The genus's single most economically important species — source of cassis and crème de cassis, and the base fruit for Ribena and blackcurrant juice/cordial. Fruit is small, black and glossy, with a bold, musky flavor much better cooked than eaten raw; very high in vitamin C and anthocyanins.
buffalo / clove currant
Ribes odoratum
Grown as much for its clove-scented, bright yellow, tubular spring flowers and good fall color as for fruit. The named cultivar 'Crandall' produces large, glossy black berries that are notably sweeter and less musky than black currant — good fresh-eating as well as jam.
Canada gooseberry
Ribes oxyacanthoides
A small, spiny, very cold-hardy wild gooseberry of boreal and northern prairie regions, historically used by Indigenous peoples and early settlers — its flavor is thinly documented compared to cultivated gooseberry types.
redcurrant
Ribes rubrum
The classic tart, translucent red currant — too acidic to eat fresh in quantity for most people, but prized for jelly, jam, syrup, sauces (cumberland sauce) and baking. A real commercial soft-fruit crop across northern and central Europe.
northern redcurrant
Ribes triste
A cold-hardy, wetland-loving wild red currant found across boreal North America and northeast Asia — tart fruit used for pies and preserves, and historically valuable to breeders for introducing cold-hardiness into cultivated redcurrant lines. Genuinely thin on culinary documentation compared to R. rubrum.
gooseberry
Ribes uva-crispa
The classic European dessert and culinary gooseberry — tart to sweet depending on ripeness and cultivar, used underripe for cooking (pies, fools, sauces for oily fish) and fully ripe for fresh eating. Distinct from American gooseberry cultivars (bred mostly from R. hirtellum), which are smaller, hardier and milder-flavored.
jostaberry
Ribes × nidigrolaria
A deliberately bred German hybrid — blackcurrant (R. nigrum) × European gooseberry (R. uva-crispa) × the wild American coastal black gooseberry (R. divaricatum), whose genes were key to overcoming the cross's initial sterility. Bred by Paul Lorenz from 1926 at Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; Rudolf Bauer achieved a fertile line using colchicine-induced tetraploidy and released the first cultivar, 'Josta', in 1977 (the name is a portmanteau of German Johannisbeere/currant and Stachelbeere/gooseberry). Fruit is blackcurrant-sized or larger, dark purple-black, with a flavor between the two parents — less musky than blackcurrant, juicier and milder than gooseberry.
bitternut hickory
Carya cordiformis
Bitternut hickory lives up to its name — the thin-shelled nuts are notably bitter and astringent, so unpalatable that even squirrels often leave them uneaten. Historically the oil pressed from the nuts was burned in lamps rather than eaten, and the wood is prized for smoking ham and bacon, giving this species a real use but a poor reputation at the table compared with shagbark or shellbark hickory.
pignut hickory
Carya glabra
Pignut hickory nut quality is genuinely inconsistent — some trees produce sweet, pleasant nuts while others are bitter and astringent, and overall the species is considered inferior eating to shagbark or shellbark hickory. The nut is also small with a thick shell relative to the little kernel inside, so many foragers leave the crop for wildlife; a coastal variant (var. megacarpa) is reported to have a notably sweeter, better nut than the typical inland form.
shagbark hickory
Carya ovata
Shagbark hickory is widely regarded as one of the two best-tasting hickories, alongside shellbark — the kernel is genuinely sweet and rich, and it's the wild hickory most often gathered and sold, even though thick native shells make cracking work; selected cultivars have been bred for thinner shells. Its shaggy, plate-like exfoliating bark, unique among the hickories, makes it easy to identify even from a distance.
mockernut hickory
Carya tomentosa
Mockernut hickory nuts have a genuinely delicious, sweet flavor, but the common name is apt — the shell is extremely thick and hard, and the kernel is quite small relative to the overall size of the nut, so extraction is difficult and the effort-to-reward ratio is poor compared with shagbark or shellbark hickory.
Japanese walnut
Juglans ailantifolia
The Japanese walnut is grown as much for its huge, bold, downy pinnate leaves and ornamental spring catkins as for its nuts, which form in clusters of 4–10 spherical fruits inside a green husk. Its heart-shaped-nut cultivar, the heartnut (var. cordiformis), cracks cleanly into two halves and is prized for eating fresh; the species is also notable as a low-juglone, canker-resistant genetic donor used to breed disease-tolerant hybrids with the endangered butternut.
butternut
Juglans cinerea
Butternut is the true 'white walnut,' prized for its sweet, oily nutmeat, but it is now one of North America's most endangered trees — an introduced fungus, butternut canker, has killed the majority of wild trees since the 1960s with no cure available, making surviving canker-tolerant individuals and butternut × Japanese walnut ('buartnut') hybrids a conservation priority.
Manchurian walnut
Juglans mandshurica
Manchurian walnut is the cold-hardiest of the commonly grown walnuts, native to the forests of Manchuria, the Russian Far East and Korea, and it is prized in breeding and rootstock programs for passing on cold tolerance and disease resistance to cultivated walnuts, alongside its own thick-shelled, oil-rich nuts.
black walnut
Juglans nigra
Black walnut is the classic North American nut-and-timber walnut, prized for its rich, bold, distinctly stronger-flavored oily kernel and dark cabinet-grade wood, but it is also the textbook case of juglone allelopathy — its roots, hulls and fallen leaves poison nearby tomatoes, apples and pines — and it is the species most severely threatened by thousand cankers disease.
Persian / English walnut
Juglans regia
Persian (English) walnut is the world's dominant commercial walnut — the species behind virtually every walnut sold in stores — grown on 'Paradox' rootstock across California and other Mediterranean-climate regions for its comparatively thin shell and mild, buttery-flavored kernel.
chocolate vine
Akebia quinata
⚠ Pulp sweet but INSIPID/variable. In Japan the bitter RIND — stuffed and fried — is the prized culinary part.
spicebush
Lindera benzoin
Spicebush berries = an allspice-like SPICE; sassafras leaves = filé powder. Not dessert fruits. Dried drupes as an allspice-like spice.
sassafras
Sassafras albidum
Grown for two different things and neither of them the berry: the young leaves, dried and ground, are filé powder, the thickener that finishes a Louisiana gumbo, and the tree gives some of the finest autumn colour in North America. ⚠ Root and root bark are NOT safe to consume — they contain safrole, and the traditional sassafras root tea is no longer considered advisable.
white mulberry
Morus alba
Morus alba is the classic white mulberry of the Old-World silk trade — its leaves are the preferred, most easily digested feed for the silkworm Bombyx mori, and its sweet but often mild-flavored fruit ripens white, pink, red, or near-black depending on the tree. In much of temperate North America it has also become a weedy, bird-spread colonizer that hybridizes with, and displaces, the native red mulberry, Morus rubra.
red mulberry
Morus rubra
Red mulberry — sweet, good-flavored fruit from a fast-growing native tree of eastern North American woodlands; the species is increasingly threatened in the wild by hybridization with introduced white mulberry (Morus alba), which is genetically swamping it across parts of its range.
sweetfern
Comptonia peregrina
Not a fruit crop — an aromatic shrub whose leaves make a herbal tea; it bears a small bur-like nutlet, not a fleshy edible fruit. Leaves for tea; nitrogen-fixing. Distinct from the related Myrica/Morella (yangmei), which has the edible fruit.
Swiss stone pine
Pinus cembra
Swiss stone pine seeds are small (8–12 mm) but rich and nutty — harvested regionally in the Alps for confectionery and liqueurs (notably in South Tyrol) rather than sold internationally as a commodity nut the way the related Italian stone pine is.
Korean pine
Pinus koraiensis
Korean pine is the pine nut of everyday commerce — the main species behind the pine nuts sold internationally out of China, Russia and North Korea (together over 60% of the global supply), wild-collected from natural stands and largely processed for export in northeastern China.
Siberian dwarf pine
Pinus pumila
Siberian dwarf pine is a low, shrubby, extremely cold-hardy species — its seeds are edible, oily and nutritious, but harvested only locally and casually in Siberia and Japan rather than traded commercially like its larger pine relatives.
Siberian pine
Pinus sibirica
Siberian pine — called kedr (cedar) in Russia and a genuine source of national pride — produces the seeds pressed into prized Siberian 'cedar nut' oil, noted for one of the highest pinolenic acid contents of any pine nut; wild stands crop unpredictably, with a good harvest only about once every four years.
rhubarb
Rheum rhabarbarum
⚠ STALKS ONLY — the leaf blades are toxic (soluble oxalates and anthraquinone glycosides) and must never be eaten; only the leaf stalks (petioles) are food, and they are cooked. Sharp and superb. Herbaceous, and its vernalization requirement differs from fruit-tree chill.
perennial sorrel
Rumex acetosa
Sharp, lemony leaves eaten raw in salad when young or cooked into soups and sauces — the acidity is oxalic acid, the same compound that makes rhubarb stalks sharp. Fine in normal culinary amounts; worth moderating if you are prone to kidney stones, and not a green to eat by the bowlful. Cooked sorrel collapses to a khaki purée in seconds, which is normal.
saskatoon berry
Amelanchier alnifolia
Saskatoon — sweet, blueberry-like with a distinct almond note. Very good.
downy serviceberry
Amelanchier arborea
Amelanchier arborea is the tallest and most tree-like of the widespread North American serviceberries, capable of reaching 12m (40ft) in the wild though usually seen as a large multi-stemmed shrub or small single-trunk tree in cultivation — it produces some of the earliest white blossom of the eastern forest understory, opening before the leaves emerge in early spring.
Canadian serviceberry
Amelanchier canadensis
Amelanchier canadensis is a wetland-adapted, strongly colony-forming shrub of the Atlantic coastal plain, distinct from the more upland, tree-form A. arborea and A. laevis it is frequently confused with in the nursery trade — its vigorous suckering habit makes it especially useful for naturalizing along pond and stream margins.
Allegheny serviceberry
Amelanchier laevis
Amelanchier laevis produces some of the largest and best-tasting fruit in the genus — up to 18mm across, succulent and sweet — and is notable in the botanical literature as one of the species in which apomixis (asexual seed production without fertilization) was specifically documented, a phenomenon central to the genus's famously tangled taxonomy. Seedlings are slow to bear, reaching fruiting age around 12 years from seed.
snowy mespilus / juneberry
Amelanchier lamarckii
A shrub or small tree of genuinely unsettled taxonomic status — likely a natural hybrid of eastern North American parentage (A. arborea/canadensis × A. laevis) that may no longer exist in an identifiable wild form — Amelanchier lamarckii has nonetheless become one of the most widely planted ornamental Amelanchier in European gardens, prized for coppery-bronze spring foliage, abundant white blossom, and reliable red-orange autumn color, and carries the RHS Award of Garden Merit.
European serviceberry
Amelanchier ovalis
The classic wild serviceberry of European mountains, found from Spain to the Caucasus and North Africa on rocky, often limestone slopes — a slow-growing, sun-loving shrub valued in gardens chiefly for its abundant white spring blossom rather than for its fruit, which is edible but noticeably drier and blander than that of the North American species.
running serviceberry
Amelanchier stolonifera
Named for its stoloniferous, thicket-forming habit — running serviceberry is a low eastern North American shrub that spreads by underground stolons and root suckers to colonize an area rather than stay put as a discrete clump, making it well suited to naturalizing, erosion control on banks, and native hedgerows.
Utah serviceberry
Amelanchier utahensis
A dryland-adapted serviceberry of the Intermountain West and desert Southwest, ranging from Washington and Montana south to Baja California and Texas on dry, rocky slopes — its deep, spreading root system makes it noticeably more drought-tolerant once established than its eastern North American and European relatives.
Amelanchier × Sorbus hybrid
Amelasorbus jackii
Small pome between serviceberry and rowan; mild, sweet-astringent. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
Amelanchier × Sorbus hybrid
Amelasorbus raciborskiana
Small pome; mild, sweet-astringent. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
red chokeberry
Aronia arbutifolia
Tart and astringent raw — more palatable fresh than black chokeberry, but still best cooked with sugar into jams, jellies, syrup or juice, where the abundant pectin gives a heavy, vibrant-red set.
black chokeberry
Aronia melanocarpa
⚠ Very astringent raw — best processed into juice, wine or jam.
purple chokeberry
Aronia × prunifolia
A natural hybrid between red and black chokeberry (A. arbutifolia × A. melanocarpa), with dark purple-black fruit intermediate in astringency between its two parents — still best cooked with sugar into jam, jelly, syrup or juice rather than eaten raw in quantity.
flowering quince
Chaenomeles speciosa
Grown mainly for its dramatic early spring blossom, with fruit that's hard, sour and astringent fresh off the shrub — cooked into jelly, jam or a sharp, quince-like preserve, closer to true quince than to an eating apple.
fireberry hawthorn
Crataegus chrysocarpa
Fireberry hawthorn is a cold-hardy, multi-stemmed shrub of northern North America, notable for its early-ripening, showy orange-red fruit and its status as the most common hawthorn across much of its range, including Minnesota, where it typically colonizes forest edges and open brushy ground.
black hawthorn
Crataegus douglasii
Black hawthorn is the characteristic hawthorn of the Pacific Northwest and interior western mountains, ranging from southeastern Alaska to northern California and east into the Rockies — the only Crataegus native that far north on the West Coast. Unlike most other hawthorns in this group, it spreads by root suckering into dense thickets, and its dark purple-to-black fruit sets it apart from the typically red haws of related species.
midland hawthorn
Crataegus laevigata
Midland hawthorn is one of only two hawthorns native to Britain, where — alongside the more common Crataegus monogyna — it forms ancient woodland understorey and old hedgerows across central and southern England, distinguished by its shallowly lobed leaves (cut less than halfway to the midrib) and haws that contain two seeds rather than one.
common hawthorn
Crataegus monogyna
⚠ Honestly: mealy and bland — for jelly, not fresh eating. Worth flagging too: outside its native European/W. Asian range it is a documented escapee — bird-spread seed has let it naturalize aggressively enough in parts of North America, Australia and New Zealand to be treated as invasive, so plant it with more caution there than the straightforward hedging reputation it has at home.
Chinese hawthorn
Crataegus pinnatifida
Grown specifically for its tart, vitamin C- and pectin-rich fruit, which underpins real, still-thriving Chinese food traditions — tanghulu candy, shanzhagao fruit leather, haw flakes, jams and preserves — as well as traditional medicinal use as a digestive aid, distinguishing it sharply from the other hawthorns on this list.
Japanese strawberry
Fragaria iinumae
A diploid, hermaphroditic wild strawberry from the mountains of Japan and southern Sakhalin; along with woodland strawberry, it's one of the two diploid ancestral species behind the cultivated garden strawberry, and genetically the earliest-diverging lineage among the diploid Fragaria species.
Iturup strawberry
Fragaria iturupensis
Discovered on Iturup Island in the Kuril Islands and formally described in 1973; unusual among wild strawberries outside the Americas for its relatively large fruit, comparable in size to Virginia strawberry, and notable for including both octoploid and rare naturally occurring decaploid individuals — the first decaploid strawberry ever documented.
musk strawberry
Fragaria moschata
Historically the first strawberry to receive a cultivar name (France, 1576) and the dominant garden strawberry across much of Europe before being displaced by the modern garden strawberry in the 19th century — grown for a complex aroma blending strawberry, raspberry and pineapple notes rather than fruit size.
eastern Asian strawberry
Fragaria orientalis
A cold-hardy wild strawberry native to Siberia, the Russian Far East, Mongolia, Korea and northern China, valued by breeders for frost tolerance and aromatic fruit; unlike the strongly dioecious musk strawberry, its flowers are typically bisexual and self-fertile.
woodland / wild strawberry
Fragaria vesca
The woodland strawberry bears small (~15 mm) but intensely aromatic fruit and is the most widely naturalized wild strawberry species worldwide; cultivated in European gardens since at least Roman times, long before the modern garden strawberry existed.
Virginia strawberry
Fragaria virginiana
Native to eastern and central North America, and one of the two wild species — alongside the South American beach strawberry — whose 18th-century hybridization in Europe produced the modern garden strawberry.
creamy / green strawberry
Fragaria viridis
The green or creamy strawberry, native from western Europe across Russia and Central Asia to Turkey; its fruit often stays greenish-tinged even when ripe, with a distinctive rich, musky, pineapple-like flavor rather than typical strawberry aroma.
garden strawberry
Fragaria × ananassa
Not a wild species but an 18th-century hybrid of the South American beach strawberry and the North American Virginia strawberry, first arising in Brittany, France — virtually all commercial strawberries grown today descend from this original cross.
vesca × ananassa hybrid
Fragaria × vescana
A fertile hybrid combining a chromosome-doubled woodland strawberry with the garden strawberry, bred to merge the size and vigor of the garden strawberry with the intense aroma of the woodland strawberry; breeding began in 1918, with named cultivars following from the late 1970s onward.
Siberian crabapple
Malus baccata
The Siberian crabapple is among the coldest-hardy and most disease-resistant species in the genus, valued both as an ornamental (fragrant white flowers, cherry-sized red-to-yellow fruit in dense clusters) and as a foundational genetic resource — its cold tolerance and broad disease resistance make it a common parent in breeding programs for hardy apple cultivars and rootstocks in northern climates.
sweet crabapple
Malus coronaria
Sweet crabapple is valued for its intensely fragrant, rose-pink spring blossoms and for fruit that — despite being harsh and acid off the tree — makes excellent jelly and cider once fully ripe; the fruit persists on the tree well after leaf-fall. It is one of only a few crabapple species native to eastern North America and has historically been used in regional folk horticulture for preserves.
apple
Malus domestica
The familiar eating apple is a hybrid-origin fruit tree descended mainly from the wild Central Asian apple Malus sieversii, refined over millennia of selection and grafting into thousands of named cultivars that vary enormously in flavor, texture, and use — from sharp cooking apples to sweet dessert varieties — with virtually all of that variation dependent on which cultivar is grafted rather than on the species itself.
Japanese flowering crabapple
Malus floribunda
Japanese flowering crabapple is grown almost entirely for its exceptional spring display — crimson buds opening to fragrant white or pale pink blossom on gracefully arching branches — and is agriculturally significant well beyond ornament: its Vf scab-resistance gene, taken from a single accession, underlies a large share of the scab-resistant apple cultivars bred over the past century.
Hupeh crabapple
Malus hupehensis
Tea crabapple is a vigorous, profusely flowering ornamental — pink buds opening to fragrant white blossom followed by abundant bright red, cherry-sized fruit — but its most distinctive biological trait is triploid apomixis: because its seed usually develops clonally rather than sexually, seedlings breed true to the mother tree, a rare trait among Malus that has made it valuable as a uniform seedling rootstock in Chinese apple production.
prairie crabapple
Malus ioensis
Prairie crabapple is a thicket-forming native of the American tallgrass prairie region, distinguished from most other Malus species here by its tendency to sucker from the roots, and prized horticulturally for intensely fragrant spring blossom — the double-flowered selection 'Bechtel's Crab' was a popular 19th- and early-20th-century dooryard tree grown specifically for its fragrance.
plum-leaf crabapple
Malus prunifolia
Known as plum-leaf or Chinese crabapple, this hardy small tree bears yellow-to-red pomes to about 2 cm across that are edible but typically mealy and astringent, though some forms and individual specimens have been recorded with a sweet, pleasant taste — it has long served in China as a rootstock for grafted apple.
wild apple (crop ancestor)
Malus sieversii
This is the principal wild ancestor of the domesticated apple, native to the wild-apple forests of the Tian Shan in Kazakhstan and neighboring Central Asian countries — its fruit already shows the large size (up to 7–8 cm) and wide variation in flavor, color, and shape that breeders still mine today, and the species is now assessed as Vulnerable in the wild, making its native forests an active conservation priority.
European crabapple
Malus sylvestris
The true wild crabapple of Europe, found in hedgerows and oak woodland on neutral-to-calcareous soils, its small, hard, intensely sour fruit was traditionally pressed into verjuice — a medieval souring agent used the way lemon juice is today — and is still used for crabapple jelly, its flavor improving markedly once the fruit has been frosted.
cutleaf crabapple
Malus transitoria
The cutleaf crabapple takes its common name from its deeply lobed, almost fern-like foliage — an unusual trait among Malus — and is grown as a graceful, small-fruited ornamental valued for its slender, wide-spreading branches, masses of white spring blossom, and golden-yellow autumn leaf color; it holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit.
wild crab apple
Peraphyllum ramosissimum
Sour and slightly bitter as it first ripens, mellowing to mildly sweet with a lingering bitter aftertaste when fully ripe — the fruits that ripen and dry on the shrub are the sweetest and most palatable, and good for jelly or spiced like preserved crabapples.
cherry prinsepia
Prinsepia sinensis
Red, juicy fruit with a pleasant, slightly tart, cherry-like flavor — eaten out of hand or made into jam, juice and pies. Extremely cold-hardy. ⚠ Kernels cyanogenic, as with other stone fruit in the rose family.
hedge prinsepia
Prinsepia uniflora
Small cherry-like drupes, red or purple-black depending on the plant — a close relative of P. sinensis but far less documented for flavor, grown more as a tough, spiny hedging shrub in its cold, arid native range than as a fruit crop. ⚠ Kernels cyanogenic, as with other stone fruit in the rose family.
apricot
Prunus armeniaca
Sweet-tart, aromatic flesh eaten fresh, dried, or made into jams and liqueurs — the velvety orange-yellow skin blushes red where sun-exposed. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
sweet cherry
Prunus avium
Sweet, juicy fresh-eating flavor in cultivated forms — from firm and mild to deep and richly flavored — while the wild type's smaller, more bitter fruit is traditionally distilled into kirsch and maraschino liqueur. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
cherry plum
Prunus cerasifera
Fruit ranges from sweet-tart to fully sweet depending on the seedling or cultivar and is eaten fresh or made into jam — though most garden forms, especially purple-leaved ones, are grown chiefly for foliage and blossom rather than for eating. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
sour / tart cherry
Prunus cerasus
Tart, acidic flavor unsuited to fresh eating for most people but prized for pies, preserves, juice, and dried cherries — Montmorency is the archetypal culinary sour cherry. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
European plum
Prunus domestica
Ripe fruit is sweet and rich — eaten fresh, dried into prunes, cooked into jam, or distilled into brandies such as slivovitz — with flavor and texture varying enormously between the many European plum cultivars. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
European dwarf / steppe cherry
Prunus fruticosa
Fruit is harshly tart and acidic — rarely eaten out of hand, but valued cooked or sweetened for jams, jellies, pies, and cherry liqueurs. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
Chinese bush cherry
Prunus humilis
Fruit is small and sour — described as acid but not unpalatable to very sour depending on the selection — and is eaten raw or, more often, cooked into preserves. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
Japanese bush cherry
Prunus japonica
The small cherry-like drupes have a sweet-tart flavor reminiscent of sour cherry and are eaten fresh, stewed, or made into pies and preserves — the flesh is pleasant but the seed kernels contain amygdalin. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
Amur chokecherry
Prunus maackii
The small black cherries are astringent and rarely eaten out of hand, but are gathered for jams, jellies, and wine, and are an important late-summer food source for birds. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
Manchurian apricot
Prunus mandshurica
Wild-type fruit is small, dry, and sour to slightly bitter, but seedling trees vary widely and some produce sweet, juicy, apricot-flavored fruit good for fresh eating, jams, and preserves. ⚠ As with other apricots, the kernels are cyanogenic and should not be eaten raw.
Korean cherry
Prunus maximowiczii
The small (about 5 mm) cherries are edible but thin-fleshed and grown mainly for ornament rather than fresh eating; in parts of Korea and Japan the salted flowers are occasionally used as a fragrant garnish. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
bird cherry
Prunus padus
The small black cherries are very bitter and astringent raw, but are traditionally cooked into jams, syrups, and flavored spirits once sweetened. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
pin cherry
Prunus pensylvanica
The small, sour cherries are too tart for most fresh eating but are traditionally cooked down into jams, jellies, and syrups, and are an important food source for dozens of bird species as well as small mammals and bears. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
black cherry
Prunus serotina
⚠ Ripe black cherries are bittersweet with thin skin and dark juicy flesh, traditionally used to flavor whiskey (cherry bounce) and in jams, syrups, and baking — wilted leaves, bark, and seeds are cyanogenic (the ripe flesh itself is edible).
Siberian apricot
Prunus sibirica
The flesh is thin, dry, and sour to the point of being barely palatable fresh, so the species is grown mainly for its almond-flavored kernel, pressed for oil, and as extremely cold-hardy apricot breeding stock — ⚠ kernels are bitter and cyanogenic if eaten raw in quantity.
blackthorn / sloe
Prunus spinosa
⚠ The sloe is intensely astringent and essentially inedible raw off the bush, but once the first frosts soften its tannins it is traditionally used to make sloe gin, jellies, and preserves — kernels are cyanogenic like other Prunus stones.
Nanking cherry
Prunus tomentosa
⚠ Fruit ranges from sweet to tart depending on the seedling and ripens earlier than most cherries, often by June; eaten fresh or made into pies, jellies, and wine — pits are cyanogenic like other Prunus stones.
flowering almond
Prunus triloba
Grown as an ornamental for its double pink spring blossom; the small red fruits are edible but thin-fleshed and mild, and are rarely eaten since the popular double-flowered cultivars are sterile and don't fruit at all. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
chokecherry
Prunus virginiana
Fruit is very astringent and bitter fresh off the tree but transforms into good jelly, syrup, and wine once cooked with sugar, and was historically pounded whole into pemmican by Plains peoples — ⚠ seeds, bark, and wilted leaves are cyanogenic.
Chinese white pear
Pyrus bretschneideri
The 'Chinese white pear' — juicy, white-to-light-yellow-fleshed pears shaped more like a European pear (narrowing toward the stem) than the round nashi/Asian pears also grown in East Asia. Unlike buttery European pear cultivars, the flesh stays crisp and high in water content even fully ripe, with a mild, subtly floral sweetness — it's eaten fresh rather than bletted.
European pear
Pyrus communis
Best ripened off the tree.
Xinjiang pear
Pyrus sinkiangensis
Pyrus sinkiangensis, the Xinjiang pear, is a genuinely obscure taxon in Western references — a probable complex hybrid grown almost exclusively in Xinjiang, China, best known through the 'Korla fragrant pear,' a geographically-protected local delicacy cultivated along the Silk Road for well over a millennium. Cultivars vary widely, some needing an after-harvest ripening period like European pears and others eaten crisp off the tree like Chinese white pears.
Ussurian pear
Pyrus ussuriensis
Pyrus ussuriensis, the Ussurian or Harbin pear, is valued far more as an extremely cold-hardy breeding parent and rootstock than for its own fruit, which is typically small, hard and only modestly palatable. It is a direct ancestor of cultivated Asian pears and remains the standard source of hardiness genes for pear breeding in cold-winter regions.
arctic rose
Rosa acicularis
Arctic rose is the most cold-hardy of the six species here, native well into the boreal and Arctic zone. Its hips are modest in size and thin-fleshed compared with rugosa or villosa, but they were a genuine traditional food source for northern peoples, eaten fresh after frost or dried for tea and winter stores. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
prairie rose
Rosa arkansana
Prairie rose is a small, tough, deep-rooted species of the North American plains, dying back to the crown each winter. Its hips are small and thin-fleshed compared with rugosa or villosa — closer in character to arctic rose's — valued historically more for jelly, tea, and wildlife forage than for thick preserving flesh. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
dog rose
Rosa canina
Dog rose is the classic European wild rose whose hips built the tradition of rosehip syrup — it was the backbone of Britain's wartime vitamin C supply. Hips are thin-fleshed and tart rather than richly fleshy, so they are processed into syrup, jelly, or tea rather than eaten as fresh fruit.
sweet briar
Rosa rubiginosa
Sweet briar (eglantine) is, alongside dog rose, one of the two classic European wild sources of vitamin-C-rich rosehip syrup, but is most easily told apart in the garden by its apple-scented foliage. Outside Europe it has become a documented invasive weed in parts of South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, a genuine caution for anyone growing it outside its native range. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
rugosa rose
Rosa rugosa
Rugosa rose produces the largest, fleshiest, best-tasting hips of the six species here, genuinely excellent for jam and syrup, and is also the most disease-resistant rose in the group. Its strong suckering habit is a double edge — a useful trait for stabilizing sandy ground, but also the reason it has become an invasive coastal weed in parts of Europe and North America outside its native range. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
apple rose
Rosa villosa
Apple rose bears some of the largest, fleshiest, most vitamin-C-rich hips of any wild rose — genuinely excellent for jam, jelly, and tea, on a par with rugosa in fruit quality — and its apple-scented foliage is a real, identifying trait rather than a marketing claim. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Allegheny blackberry
Rubus allegheniensis
One of the best wild American blackberries — sweet, aromatic, good fresh and cooked.
arctic raspberry / nagoonberry
Rubus arcticus
A dwarf, thornless groundcover raspberry of arctic and boreal bogs and clearings, spreading by rhizomes into low mats rarely more than 20–30 cm tall. The fruit is a small aggregate of 10–30 deep-red to dark-purple drupelets with a distinctive pineapple-like aroma — prized across Scandinavia for jam and for mesimarja, a liqueur made from the berries since 1882. It is also a parent, alongside red raspberry, of the hybrid "nectar raspberries" bred for garden use in Scandinavia and Scotland.
cloudberry
Rubus chamaemorus
Cloudberry is a genus outlier in almost every respect — a low, unbranched, non-prickly perennial of cold bogs rather than a caned bramble, it is dioecious (needing separate male and female plants, unlike the mostly self-fertile Rubus genus) and demands acidic, waterlogged peat rather than ordinary garden soil. It is culturally significant across Scandinavia — served with cheese in Finland, as a dessert topping in Sweden (where it is nicknamed "Norrland's gold"), and as moltekrem (cloudberry cream) in Norway — and appears on Finland's two-euro coin.
Korean raspberry
Rubus crataegifolius
A wild East Asian raspberry used in traditional Korean medicine — unripe fruit is sold dried as 'Bok Bun Ja' (Rubi Fructus) in Korean herbal markets — with fresh fruit described as sweet and agreeably flavoured, similar in size to a small garden raspberry.
northern dewberry
Rubus flagellaris
Sweet-tart, blackberry-like, seedy; good fresh, small crop.
red raspberry
Rubus idaeus
Excellent fresh.
black raspberry
Rubus occidentalis
The 'blackcap' — readily told apart from other brambles by canes coated in a powdery, whitish-blue bloom and by fruit that ripens through white, then red, before finally turning black-purple. Flavor is rich and more intense than red raspberry, good fresh but especially prized for jams, syrups, and pies. Unusual among brambles for tolerating black walnut's juglone. The trade-off is disease susceptibility — it is markedly more vulnerable than red raspberry to both orange rust and verticillium wilt, so site it away from old bramble patches and recent nightshade-family beds.
flowering raspberry
Rubus odoratus
Grown primarily as an ornamental for its large magenta flowers rather than for its fruit — the berries are edible but notably dry, crumbly and seedy, usually cooked into jam or preserves rather than eaten fresh, and extension sources describe them plainly as unappetizing.
thimbleberry
Rubus parviflorus
Produces a soft, thimble-shaped aggregate fruit — the ripe drupelets lift off the receptacle as a hollow cap, giving the fruit (and the plant) its name — that is tart to pleasantly sweet but very seedy and too soft to ship, so it is grown as a garden or native/restoration plant rather than for commercial fruit.
Pennsylvania blackberry
Rubus pensilvanicus
Ordinary wild blackberry — sweet-tart, variable between clones.
stone bramble
Rubus saxatilis
⚠ Honestly: only 2–6 large translucent red drupelets per fruit — sharply acidic, more curiosity than crop; used for cordial in Scandinavia.
American red raspberry
Rubus strigosus
A true red raspberry — sweet-tart, softer and smaller than the European; excellent fresh. Frequently treated as R. idaeus subsp. strigosus.
Sorbus × Aronia hybrid (cvs 'Fallax', 'Saule')
Sorbaronia
Dark berries between rowan and chokeberry — astringent, best cooked/for juice. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
Shipova / Bollwiller pear (Sorbus × Pyrus)
Sorbopyrus auricularis
Sweet, soft pear-like flesh with a hint of rowan — a genuinely good, sought-after rarity.
American mountain ash
Sorbus americana
American mountain ash is a small, hardy boreal tree whose bright red berries are famous winter wildlife food for birds, bears and browsing moose and deer rather than a mainstream human food — the raw fruit is thin-fleshed, sour and heavily tannic, and only becomes reliably edible for people after the first hard freeze softens and sweetens it, when it can be used for pies and jelly. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
rowan / mountain ash
Sorbus aucuparia
Rowan — also called mountain ash — is famous for berries that are far too astringent and acidic to eat raw in any quantity; British tradition instead cooks them, often after a frost or a spell in the freezer to break down the bitter parasorbic acid, into the classic tart preserve rowan jelly, along with compotes, chutneys and syrups.
Sitka mountain ash
Sorbus sitchensis
A Pacific Northwest and Alaska mountain native — adapted to cold, wet, subalpine-to-montane conditions and often found on rocky slopes near snowmelt. The fruit is mealy and astringent raw but sweetens after frost and can be cooked into pies and preserves, as with other rowans. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
partridgeberry
Mitchella repens
⚠ Honestly: bland, nearly tasteless — a curiosity. Evergreen groundcover.
common prickly-ash
Zanthoxylum americanum
Citrus as familiar. ⚠ Zanthoxylum = a numbing SPICE (husks), not a fruit. Clove-scented spice drupes.
Norway maple
Acer platanoides
Spring sap tapped for syrup — around 3.2% sugar, a good tappable European maple.
sycamore maple
Acer pseudoplatanus
Spring sap tapped for syrup — around 3.2% sugar, comparable to Norway maple.
red maple
Acer rubrum
Spring sap tapped for syrup, sweeter than the birches but less sweet than sugar maple.
sugar maple
Acer saccharum
Spring sap boiled down to maple syrup — the classic sugar maple, all-sucrose and among the sweetest tappable saps.
yellowhorn
Xanthoceras sorbifolium
Pea-sized seeds edible cooked — sweet, likened to sweet chestnut or macadamia; a genuine Chinese edible-oil crop. Young leaves and flowers also cooked. Edible seeds & flowers; ⚠ seed oil contains erucic acid (~9%) — consume in moderation.
five-flavor berry / wu wei zi
Schisandra chinensis
⚠ Five-flavour berry — MEDICINAL/adaptogenic (tart, harsh, resinous). Used dried, as tea or tincture — NOT a dessert fruit.
American bladdernut
Staphylea trifolia
Pistachio-like edible seeds in papery rattling pods.
Amur grape
Vitis amurensis
Amur grape is grown mainly as a genetic source of extreme cold hardiness and disease resistance for grape breeding rather than as a fresh-eating fruit — its wild-tart, deep blue-black berries are more often pressed for juice, wine or preserves than eaten out of hand.
fox grape
Vitis labrusca
Fox grape is the wild ancestor behind most classic American juice and table grape cultivars — Concord, Catawba, Delaware, Niagara and Isabella all descend from it — prized for its musky, aromatic 'foxy' flavor and slip-skin berries that pop free of their flesh, though the species itself is a coarse, seedy wild vine rather than a refined dessert fruit. ⚠ Know the look-alike: across eastern and central North America, moonseed (Menispermum canadense) twines alongside wild grapes, carries similar dark hanging clusters, and is potentially fatal. Three checks — a grape has 2–4 rounded, pear-shaped seeds while moonseed has ONE flat crescent seed; a grape climbs by forked tendrils and moonseed has none; a grape's leaves are toothed and moonseed's are not. Open a berry and look at the seed before eating any wild grape.
riverbank grape
Vitis riparia
One of the most cold-hardy grape species on Earth — some vines survive to about -57°C (-71°F) — and thanks to that hardiness plus resistance to phylloxera and powdery mildew, it has been the key rootstock and breeding parent behind cold-climate hybrid wine grapes such as Frontenac, Marechal Foch and Baco Noir. ⚠ Know the look-alike: across eastern and central North America, moonseed (Menispermum canadense) twines alongside wild grapes, carries similar dark hanging clusters, and is potentially fatal. Three checks — a grape has 2–4 rounded, pear-shaped seeds while moonseed has ONE flat crescent seed; a grape climbs by forked tendrils and moonseed has none; a grape's leaves are toothed and moonseed's are not. Open a berry and look at the seed before eating any wild grape.
Mountain serviceberry
Amelanchier bartramiana
The odd one out in the genus: its fruit is oval to pear-shaped rather than round, up to 15mm long, and borne singly or in twos rather than in the usual raceme. Sweet, though accounts split on whether it is juicy or dry. A boreal bog-and-mountain species, and the hardiest serviceberry here.
Low serviceberry
Amelanchier humilis
One of the best-flavoured serviceberries: juicy, sweet, with a distinct hint of apple and only a few soft seeds. Naturally a plant of calcareous shores and banks, so it is one to reach for where the soil is limy and blueberries are hopeless.
Inland serviceberry
Amelanchier interior
Once treated as a variety of Saskatoon (A. alnifolia); a hairy ovary (bald in most look-alikes) is the surest field mark. Sweet and juicy even before fully ripe, one of the better-flavoured serviceberries.
Roundleaf serviceberry
Amelanchier sanguinea
A dry-ground serviceberry of rocky and calcareous sites, named for the reddish young growth. Sweet, blueberry-like fruit, popular with birds as much as people.
Running serviceberry
Amelanchier spicata
Small purple-black fruit about 8mm across, sweet and juicy and good fresh. The plant runs: it suckers freely into low thickets, which makes it a hedge or bank plant rather than a specimen, and it is naturalised well outside its range in parts of northern Europe.
Canadian barberry
Berberis canadensis
America's own barberry, and a rarer plant in the wild than its Eurasian and Japanese relatives. Fruit is agreeably acid — sharp raw, better as jelly or in preserves; the young leaves are a pleasant sour trailside nibble and the flowers are edible too.
Japanese barberry
Berberis thunbergii
⚠ Listed here for completeness, not as a recommendation. The small red berries are edible raw or cooked and the leaves can be cooked, but this is one of the most damaging invasive shrubs in eastern North America — shade-tolerant, prolifically bird-sown, and prohibited in Massachusetts and Michigan.
Dwarf whitebeam
Chamaemespilus alpina
One of the few genuinely shrubby species related to the whitebeams and rowans — most of its relatives are trees. A true high-alpine plant, native to 2,500 m in the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians and Balkans, and in cultivation in Britain since 1683. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
Pear hawthorn
Crataegus calpodendron
Named for its pear-shaped fruit — larger and more thin-fleshed than most hawthorn fruit, sweet and succulent enough to eat out of hand rather than only cooked.
Kansas hawthorn
Crataegus coccinioides
A dry-hillside, limestone-loving hawthorn of the American midwest, tolerant enough of pollution and poor urban soil that it's used as a street tree within its native range.
Cockspur hawthorn
Crataegus crus-galli
The cockspur — named for the long, curved thorns that make it one of the best stockproof hedge plants in the genus. Fruit about 1cm, dry-fleshed and dull raw, but it sets well in jelly and hangs on the tree into spring.
Fanleaf hawthorn
Crataegus flabellata
Named for its broad, symmetrical, fan-shaped leaves. Fruit is sweet but soft and mealy rather than firm — a middling dessert hawthorn, better cooked than eaten out of hand.
Copenhagen hawthorn
Crataegus intricata
A shrubby hawthorn with unusually large fruit for its size — up to 14mm — and a pleasant sweet flavour, though the flesh is hard and dry and wraps up to five stones. Ripens early September, ahead of most of the genus.
Big-seed hawthorn
Crataegus macrosperma
The large seeds that give it its name often stick together inside the fruit, so it eats like a single-stoned cherry rather than the usual several-seeded haw. Quality varies by individual plant — some are thin-fleshed, juicy and acid, others thicker-fleshed and mealy but better flavoured.
Margaret's hawthorn
Crataegus margarettae
Armed with slender to moderately stout thorns over 3 cm long. A dry-ground hawthorn of hedgerows, thickets and wood margins across the Great Lakes and Midwest.
Downy hawthorn
Crataegus mollis
The downy hawthorn carries the biggest fruit of the North American haws grown here — 20–25mm, thick-fleshed, sub-acid and mealy rather than juicy. Poor fresh, very good as jelly or preserve, and easy to gather in quantity.
Scarlet hawthorn
Crataegus pedicellata
The scarlet haw, and one of the better hawthorns to eat: 10–20mm fruit that in good forms is juicy with an excellent flavour when fully ripe, though bitter if picked early. Quality varies a lot between individual trees, so taste before you plant.
Frosted hawthorn
Crataegus pruinosa
Named for the waxy bloom on the unripe fruit, which frosts it a pale blue-green. Ripens sweet and yellow, about 1cm across with up to five large stones — a pie and preserve fruit that also dries well.
Dotted hawthorn
Crataegus punctata
The dotted hawthorn carries the largest fruit of any hawthorn here — around 25mm, genuinely apple-like, dull-dotted and good in jelly and preserves. The horizontal branching makes it one of the more striking small trees in the genus.
Broad-lobed hawthorn
Crataegus rhipidophylla
An unusually long fruiting window for a hawthorn — fruit begins colouring in early summer and persists through autumn, rather than ripening in one short flush.
Quebec hawthorn
Crataegus submollis
The Quebec hawthorn is among the most practical of the haws to pick: fruit about 20mm with thick, sweet, reasonably juicy flesh and a nice flavour, carried in large clusters that come off easily by the handful.
Fleshy hawthorn
Crataegus succulenta
The most wide-ranging hawthorn in North America, from southern Canada south to Arizona and New Mexico — a testament to how adaptable it is. Unlike several relatives here, it doesn't sucker or colonize, staying a well-behaved single clump.
Green hawthorn
Crataegus viridis
One of the most disease-resistant hawthorns, and nearly thornless — an easier tree to work around than most of the genus. Fruit is technically edible but usually left for the birds, who strip it through winter.
Crowberry
Empetrum hermaphroditum
The hermaphrodite crowberry — the arctic-alpine counterpart of common crowberry, and the reason it fruits where nothing pollinates reliably: each flower carries both sexes, so a single plant sets a crop. Black berries about 7.5mm, watery and mildly acid, much improved by frost and long a staple of Arctic diets.
Red crowberry
Empetrum rubrum
Also called diddle-dee in the Falkland Islands, where it's the dominant species across large areas of dwarf shrub heath. A Southern Hemisphere counterpart to black crowberry, from Chile's alpine tree line to Cape Horn. DIOECIOUS — needs a male and female plant to fruit.
Vosges whitebeam
Hedlundia mougeotii
A tetraploid, apomictic hybrid between whitebeam (S. aria) and rowan (S. aucuparia), like many of the 'whitebeam' microspecies scattered across European mountains. Fruit is duller red than the related Swedish whitebeam's. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
Chinese pearleaf crabapple
Malus asiatica
Grown across northeastern China and Korea for its apple-like but small, tart fruit — usually cooked into jellies and preserves rather than eaten raw. Like the rest of the genus, self-incompatible: a second, unrelated apple or crabapple is needed for fruit.
Caucasian apple
Malus orientalis
One of the wild progenitor species behind the cultivated apple, alongside M. sieversii — recent genetic work has found its signature in Caucasus and Iranian apple varieties. Still rare outside botanic collections despite that pedigree.
Chinese flowering apple
Malus spectabilis
Grown for centuries in China as an ornamental — the double-flowered forms are among the showiest crabapples in spring. The 2–3cm fruit is bitter and harsh straight off the tree but becomes edible after storing and bletting in a cool dry place.
Mongolian mulberry
Morus mongolica
A hardy mountain mulberry from China and Korea, growing wild on cliffs and in ravines up to 3500 m. Fruit to 25mm, sweet but rather insipid — pleasant enough fresh, unremarkable beside black mulberry. Dioecious, so a crop needs both a male and a female tree.
Allegheny plum
Prunus alleghaniensis
The Allegheny plum: dark purple fruit up to 2cm with thick, juicy, pleasantly acid flesh — good fresh and better in preserves. A scarce plant in the wild, restricted to the Appalachians and a disjunct population in Michigan.
American plum
Prunus americana
The American plum — the hardiest plum in this catalogue and the backbone of prairie shelterbelts. Fruit about 25mm, succulent and juicy but rather acid with a tough skin; the better selections are pulpy and genuinely pleasant fresh, and all of it cooks and preserves well.
Beach plum
Prunus maritima
The beach plum, a true coastal-dune shrub that takes salt wind head-on. Fruit about 15mm, purple-black, and very variable between bushes — sub-acid to sweet — which is why the wild stands are picked selectively and named selections matter. A classic jelly fruit of the north-east American coast.
Canada plum
Prunus nigra
Extremely cold-hardy, one of the toughest plums here. Fruit is small, thick-skinned and sour off the tree — a few hard frosts improve the flavour tremendously, so this is a plum worth leaving on the tree into late season. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
Sand cherry
Prunus pumila
A genuine dune and beach plant, native almost exclusively to sandy, gravelly ground around the Great Lakes. Rich, pleasantly acid flavour once fully ripe, sometimes slightly bitter — good eaten out of hand as well as preserved. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
Western sand cherry
Prunus pumila besseyi
Reportedly hardy to about -50°C dormant — as tough as the toughest plums in this catalog. Rates among the better-flavoured sand cherries, sweetish fresh and making a tasty, slightly astringent jelly. ⚠ Kernels/pits and shoots cyanogenic — eat seeds only if sweet-tasting, never bitter.
Birchleaf pear
Pyrus betulifolia
Named for its birch-like leaves. So cold-hardy (to about -20°C dormant) and disease-resistant that orchardists use it as rootstock for cultivated pears more often than they grow it for its own small fruit, which in China is used to flavour rice wine.
Dryland pear
Pyrus xerophila
One of the toughest pears there is: reportedly hardy to about -37°C and strongly drought-tolerant, described by one specialty grower as among the most rugged species they carry. Probably a natural hybrid of Himalayan pear (P. pashia), Manchurian pear (P. ussuriensis) and domestic pear that arose along Silk Road trade routes. Grown as rootstock more often than for its own small, hard, olive-sized fruit, though it is eaten locally in China.
Red-fruited currant
Ribes erythrocarpum
A true narrow endemic, known only from the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, including inside Crater Lake National Park, on rocky subalpine ground. Scarlet, egg-shaped berries; specific taste and quality are not documented in any source found, unlike most currants and gooseberries in this catalog.
Mountain gooseberry
Ribes montigenum
A true high-mountain species, found from about 2,400 m up to alpine elevations among rocky talus and conifer bases across the western US. Fruit ripens from green to reddish-purple; edible but not as tasty as most other currants — more of a survival forage than a dessert fruit.
Appalachian gooseberry
Ribes rotundifolium
One of the better-flavoured gooseberries here — smooth-skinned (unlike most spiny gooseberries in this catalog) with a very good taste. A high-elevation Appalachian species of balds, boulderfields and rocky forest.
Sticky currant
Ribes viscosissimum
Sources genuinely disagree on this one: PFAF calls the fruit "highly esteemed", but Wikipedia and Virginia Tech's dendrology reference both independently describe the round, blue-black, very sticky berries as unpalatable or not edible. Two specific sources against one generic rating is worth taking seriously — don't expect much from this one at the table.
Field rose
Rosa arvensis
Rose hips are eaten cooked (jam, syrup) or infused for tea rather than raw — the fine hairs around the seeds are an irritant unless strained out. A vigorous rambler, sometimes called Shakespeare's musk rose.
Smooth rose
Rosa blanda
Unusually thornless or near-thornless for a wild rose — an easier plant to work around than most of the genus. Hips are a good vitamin C source, best cooked into jam or syrup rather than eaten raw. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Carolina rose
Rosa carolina
Also called pasture rose — a low, easy species of dry, open ground rather than a formal garden setting. Small, pear-shaped hips hold their colour well into winter and are a significant food source for game birds.
Cabbage rose
Rosa centifolia
Also called the Provence rose — a garden hybrid of uncertain origin with no wild populations, closely related to R. damascena and R. gallica. One of the classic perfume roses; petals are the historically important part here, flavouring tea, candied, or distilled for rosewater, more than the fruit itself. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Damask rose
Rosa damascena
An ancient artificial hybrid (R. gallica x R. moschata, itself likely crossed with R. centifolia) never found truly wild, despite the Damascus-suggesting name — probably fixed in cultivation somewhere in ancient Persia. The source of attar of roses and rosewater: petals are the historically important harvest, distilled for perfume and used to flavour drinks, sweets, baked goods and ice cream. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Glaucous dog rose
Rosa dumalis
Part of the wider dog-rose (R. canina) group, distinguished by its bluish-glaucous foliage. Hips are soft-fleshed and rich in vitamin C, best cooked into syrup or jam. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Gallic rose
Rosa gallica
Unlike its own descendants R. centifolia and R. damascena, this one is a true wild species, and one of the very first roses ever brought into cultivation. Most modern rose cultivars carry at least some of its genes. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Cinnamon rose
Rosa majalis
One of the hardiest roses grown, reportedly to about -35°C — a genuinely northern species reaching deep into Scandinavia and Siberia. Named for cinnamon-scented bark rather than the fruit.
Nootka rose
Rosa nutkana
A Pacific coast species reaching from Alaska to California. Big, purplish, pear-shaped hips that persist into winter — good frost-sweetened wildlife food, and improve in flavour for people the same way. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Burnet rose
Rosa spinosissima
Distinctive among roses for its round, deep purple-black hips rather than the usual red or orange. A tough coastal and heathland species — genuinely drought- and salt-tolerant — also known as Rosa pimpinellifolia and, in Scotland, Scotch or Scottish rose. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Downy rose
Rosa tomentosa
Named for its densely hairy, felted foliage on both leaf surfaces — the softest-leaved rose here. Best suited to the wilder parts of a planting rather than a formal bed; grown as much for its bright red autumn hips as anything else. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Virginia rose
Rosa virginiana
One of the better roses for eastern North American gardens generally, not just for the hips — foliage turns purple to red-orange to yellow in fall, unusually good color for the genus. Also salt-tolerant enough for coastal planting. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Wood's rose
Rosa woodsii
One of the most widely distributed roses in North America, reaching from Alaska to northern Mexico. Forms dense, thorny thickets by suckering — good wildlife cover and erosion control, less good in a small garden. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.
Smooth blackberry
Rubus canadensis
Also called American dewberry — unusual among brambles for being genuinely thornless, with almost completely smooth stems. One of the most highly regarded wild blackberries for flavour: sweet, juicy, richly flavoured, up to 2.5 cm long.
Swamp dewberry
Rubus hispidus
Also called bristly dewberry — a true creeping groundcover rather than an upright bramble, semi-evergreen and rooting wherever the stem tips touch soil. Fruit is edible but sour, better cooked than eaten fresh.
Bristly blackberry
Rubus setosus
Lives up to its name: 150 to 1,200 bristles per square inch on the canes, among the prickliest brambles going. More a wetland-margin plant than the drier thickets most Rubus here favour.
Red elderberry
Sambucus racemosa
The raw fruit, seeds, bark, leaves and roots all contain cyanogenic glycosides and are toxic raw — unlike black elderberry (S. nigra), even the ripe fruit needs cooking before eating, which destroys the toxins and also improves the flavor. Never eat this one raw off the bush. ⚠ Never eat this one raw.
Northern mountain ash
Sorbus decora
Also called showy mountain ash — one of the hardiest rowans here, native well into Labrador. Shiny red fruit clusters persist after leaf drop, an important winter and early-spring food source for birds. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
Swedish whitebeam
Sorbus intermedia
Possibly of hybrid origin, and apomictic like several whitebeams here — seeds are clones of the parent rather than the product of sexual reproduction. Tolerant of maritime exposure and pollution, which along with dense foliage makes it a common street and coastal tree in its native region. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.
Mapleleaf viburnum
Viburnum acerifolium
Fruit is thin-fleshed and mostly seed — edible and historically eaten by Indigenous peoples and early settlers, but sparse and not a substantial food source; grown more for understory cover and fall color than for the crop.
Wild raisin
Viburnum cassinoides
The common name is literal: as the fruit dries on the shrub in autumn it shrivels and sweetens like a raisin, with a date-like flavor once fully ripe. Now treated by many taxonomists as Viburnum nudum var. cassinoides, a variety of the wider-ranging possumhaw viburnum rather than a fully distinct species.
Arrowwood
Viburnum dentatum
Fruit is bitter and dry-fleshed, eaten mainly by birds — not a species grown for the crop, though historically the straight young stems (hence "arrowwood") were used by Indigenous peoples for arrow shafts.
Hobblebush
Viburnum lantanoides
Fruit is edible fresh once fully dark and soft, with a sweet-tart date-like flavor, though thin-fleshed with a large stone. The common name comes from its sprawling, arching branches, which root where they touch the ground and can trip ("hobble") a walker in dense thickets.
American highbush cranberry
Viburnum trilobum
The true North American highbush cranberry — not a true cranberry (Vaccinium) at all despite the name, but a viburnum that converges on the same bright-red, acidic fruit. Tart and cranberry-like, excellent for jelly and sauce, and it improves markedly after the first hard frost; raw fruit can still cause mild stomach upset if eaten unripe or in quantity. This catalog previously carried it twice, the second time under Viburnum opulus var. americanum — see the note where that entry used to be.
Udo
Aralia cordata
A commonly cultivated food crop in Japan, grown for its young shoots rather than any fruit — the taste is often described as a lemony asparagus. Traditional Japanese cultivation forces roots in dark, humid underground pits ("udo muro") to blanch the shoots pale and mild before harvest.
Japanese angelica tree
Aralia elata
The young spring shoots (taranome) are a well-known Japanese and Korean wild food, most often tempura-fried or blanched. A pioneer species in its native range, colonizing cleared forest ground quickly.
Devil's club
Oplopanax horridus
Only the very youngest spring shoots are edible, peeled and cooked — the window closes within days as the plant's dense spines harden. The bright red late-season berries are conspicuous but not edible to people, though bears eat them freely.
Siberian ginseng
Eleutherococcus senticosus
Better known as a root used in traditional medicine and supplements than as food, though young shoots are eaten locally as a spring green and the small dark berries are edible. Not a true ginseng (Panax) despite the common name — a different genus in the same family.
Northern bayberry
Myrica pensylvanica
The leaves are the crop here, not the berries: dried, they are a documented bay-leaf substitute, used the same way and removed before serving. The fruit is edible but there is very little flesh on it and that flesh is poor, so it is used to flavour soups rather than eaten — the grey wax coating it is what the plant has always really been grown for, boiled off to make bayberry candles. Note that constituents of that wax have been reported as possibly carcinogenic, which is a further reason the berries belong in the pot as a seasoning to be strained out, not in a bowl. Much hardier than its southern relative wax myrtle (zone 3 against zone 7), and the two overlap on the mid-Atlantic coast.
Bog myrtle
Myrica gale
The sweet-resinous leaves and small waxy fruit are used as a flavoring, most historically in beer before hops largely took over that role, and the crushed foliage doubles as an insect repellent. Sources genuinely disagree on the cold-hardiness floor, from zone 2 to zone 5 depending on the source — a wide-ranging boreal wetland shrub, so this catalog takes the more generous end, but treat zone 2-3 survival as less certain than the fully-sourced zone 5-7 core of its range.
French sorrel
Rumex scutatus
A milder, less acidic sorrel than common garden sorrel (R. acetosa), with an intense lemony tang most cooks prefer for sauces and salads. Low and creeping rather than upright, and self-seeds readily.
Buckwheat
Fagopyrum esculentum
Not a true cereal grass despite the name and use — a relative of rhubarb and sorrel, grown for its starchy, gluten-free triangular seeds, ground into flour for soba noodles, blini and buckwheat pancakes. Also grown as a fast, weed-smothering cover crop and bee forage.
Horseradish
Armoracia rusticana
Grated fresh root is intensely pungent — the sharp, sinus-clearing heat comes from the same class of compounds (glucosinolates) as mustard and wasabi, and fades quickly once cut or ground, so it's prepared close to serving. Extremely persistent once planted: even a small piece of root left in the ground will regrow.
Sweet woodruff
Galium odoratum
The fragrance is barely there in the fresh leaf and develops only once cut and dried, as the coumarin compound responsible is released by wilting — the classic use is Germany's May wine (Maiwein), where dried sprigs are steeped in young white wine. Large quantities of coumarin are best avoided; this is a flavoring herb used in modest amounts, not a leafy green.