Boiling the fruit with seeds makes your jam or jelly very bitter. A few seeds are ok like with apples or pear or cherry jelly…it will give that typical “Almond” flavor. The almond flavor is entirely linked to cyanide…no harm in small quantities. but the ratio of seeds/flesh in mountain ash berries is huge and it will make your jelly taste awfully bitter…inedible. Nobody eats bitter almonds…it will kill you = same principle.
Yet bitter almonds are used to make almond extract/flavoring and some bitter almonds are added to marsipan to give it that typical almond flavor.= no harm in small quantities.
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All members of the rose family have cyanide in their seeds. Crush the seeds and you will dicover the smell of bitter almonds = cyanide. Some contain a high amount and some very little. Apples, pears, cherries, plums,etc. have a relatively high amount of cyanide in the seeds. Of course you don’t eat the seeds…and a few seeds can do no harm.
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I did this so hopefully none of you will have to. I cooked/mashed the fruit of Ivan’s Belle with a generous amount of sugar. I couldn’t eat more than a few nibbles and even the sugary syrup was unpleasant to me. I find the fruit bitter, astringent, and tough. And I tend to like unusual fruit like autumn olive, cornelian cherries, goji, even the occasional aronia.
I’m keeping it because I appreciate the ornamental qualities of the “tree,” its precocity, and its ability to thrive under conditions of drought and neglect. Pictured is an Ivan’s Belle I planted last spring in a cruel corner of the orchard
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mines about the same size but no fruit yet. i have Ivans beauty. i grafted Sierra pear to a branch and it is growing well. once my tree gets bigger i can share some scions with you if you if mine tastes good. or you could graft it over to pear. i have 6 different pear growing on a wild mountain ash seedling in my front yard.
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Taste depends on climate, in my hot, humid climate both day/night of eastern KS they were insipid, tasteless and fairly mealy. Stayed green until they dropped, seen doves eating them regularly. Took over 20+ years until it bloomed/fruited. I left it there for shade and it seems healthy.
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Does this look like the same tree / fruit? I always thought it was Mountain ash but the fruit looks different.
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yep. mountain ash. they are everywhere here. .the birds start to eat them once hit by frost. right now the migrant robins are in mine.
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