Anyone growing any of these? There are lots of berries most people have never heard of.
All three are native here and of the three, salal (because itās evergreen) is commonly planted as a landscape plant in addition to whatās found wild. All three would benefit from selection since they are rarely available as select forms. For example, much of the thimbleberry plants that occur around my home are rather unproductive, but I found a colony near by that consistently produces good yields every year so I have cloned it to grow at my home (and to share with others).
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Iām growing thimbleberry but not salmon berry. Iāve heard salmon berry does not taste good.
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I thought nannyberry was a Viburnum. Salal differs from Viburnum in that the seeds are small enough to not be noticeable when eating.
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Salmonberry is variable. Generally they are a little sweet, a little tart and a little bitter. They donāt taste bad, just not especially good. The biggest problem with salmonberry fruit is that birds tend to get it as they ripen so you mostly have to eat them under-ripe if you want to beat the birds to it.
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Similar to snowberries asked about earlier, I tried to start salal seeds this year. Had the same issue, tiny seeds germinating but not getting good enough ground contact to get roots in. Its something Iām working on; I have had real issues with tiny seeds. Once I figure that out, Iāll be unstoppable*!
*Until summer wipes out these not heat tolerent plants
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I thought snowberries were poisonous?
Some other less talked about berries are bearberry and silver berry. Online I read they didnāt taste that great but when I tried them hiking in Canada, silver berries tasted like fluff with a vanilla meringue taste, very nice! And bear berries ,(orange ones, not the red ones) tasted sweet and nice.
I think these silver berries hung on for a whole season
The bearberry was very seedy but it leaves a pleasant candy taste in your mouth if you just chew the skin and spit out the seeds
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i had a patch of thimbleberry i got from Hartmanns but in 3 years never produced a berry despite them spreading near and far so i pulled them. too bad as i liked the big leaves.
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id like to trial buffalo berries but seeing i have 4 A.O its hard to justify.
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Thanks for the link!
I forgot I started a similar thread last year if you wanted to take a look at some of those fruit.
New Zealand Mountain Snowberry (Gaultheria depressa) is edible, and is related to salal and wintergreen. North American Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) is toxic. I tried to grow the former.
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Did your thimbleberry flower? I find they tend to bloom on second and third year canes.
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I donāt like using the word ātoxicā for that one since it is saponins. Basically, saponins arenāt gonna make your belly happy, but youāre not gonna need to make a run to the emergency room if you find your kid eating them.
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yes. but very sparsely in the 2nd year. never set fruit.
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My thimbleberry has died back to the ground every year for the past four years. Comes back with a vengance but no older wood to fruit.
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Iāve got a park a block from my house that has all those berries including red huckleberries. In last two years they converted an old baseball field into a native plant forest. Theyāve added a ton of native berry plants. Itās been fun eating the berries. Iāve taking cuttings and seeds from many of those, still trying to decide if I want to cultivate them.
Best flavor are the thimbleberries, but they need some decent sun exposure. Best salmon berries taste like diet grapefruit, theyāre ok, just not amazing. Salal taste like a prune, I like them, but donāt do much with them. Red huckleberries are great in baked goods and yogurt. Takes a lot of work to get a lot of them though. Red flowering currants are pretty but bland. Black raspberries are tasty. Oregon grape is tart, but think itās a mild diuretic.
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Our PNW native red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium) will make larger fruit for easier picking if managed like blueberries. Trim out older twiggy growth every couple of years.
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All three of the title berries grow wild here at my place. The thimble berry is delicious but each one feels like 1/4 the weight or less compared to a raspberry and they fruit very sparsely as you say. The salal is a little insipid but perfectly palatable. Iād be happy to eat it as fodder. The Salmonberry are bland and bitter. I cannot recommend 
Iām adding your thimbleberry selection to my list.
Now Iām remembering somebody had large berried evergreen huckleberry. Was that you, or do you recall who?
We have a red huckleberry at the corner of our driveway and another up the road at the community mailbox. Iād take it over the title berries. They are crisp, tart, refreshing like cran-apple. I think Iāve only ever seen them growing out of rotted stumps.
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The person who found the large fruited evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) is @horna. Heās calling it āVistaā basted on where he found the original. I believe he successfully rooted a small number of cuttings from it for himself and he brought me some cuttings last year which Iām working on establishing. Most of the cuttings are still looking alive and a couple are starting to push new growth so I feel that at least some of them must be rooting. Canāt wait to see first hand how the fruit size is when grown at my location.
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