Find:part shade, shade, sun; open woods,forest edges and openings.
Identification:Pin cherry bark is smooth and shiny. The bark is reddish brown with orange lenticels, or horizontal stripes.Look at the leaves. Pin cherry leaves are oblong or lance-shaped and are finely toothed along the edge.
Edible Parts and uses:produce small, edible fruits, that are sour when raw, but make excellent preserves.
Precautions:all non-fruit parts of the tree contain toxins and are inedible.
Find:part shade, shade, sun; open woods,forest edges and openings.
Identification:deciduous small shrub growing from 4 to 6 feet high and spreading just as wide.are reddish with small white lenticels. The buds are reddish brown with lighter tips to the scales, and are clustered at the top of old leaf scars. Older stems take on a more purplish color and the whitish lenticels become horizontally elongated.a series of clusters of 2 to 4 stalked flowers along the length of prior year twigs, appearing with the new leaves.
Edible Parts and uses:The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. It has a sweetish flavor but is astringent. Jelly will retain the astringency. Like all Prunus species pits, these contain hydrocyanic acid and the pits must be removed before use.Fruit matures in mid-summer.
Precautions:all non-fruit parts of the tree contain toxins and are inedible.
Apples trees -many varieties
Find:in the woods,fields,homesteads, farms and sandhills.
Identification:tree that grow to 13-39 feet tall with a dense, twiggy crown. Wild apple varieties are much smaller than cultivated kinds; the largest kinds usually do not exceed 5 to 7.5 centimeters (2 to 3 inches) in diameter, and most often are smaller. The trunk is reddish brown or grayish brown often single-trunked with low branches. The bark is smooth in young trees but becomes furrowed and knotty where branches have detached. Heavy fruit loads sometimes make the trunks (and canopy) lean. They have small, medium to dark green, somewhat spear-shaped, alternate, simple leaves with smooth or finely serrated edges, about 1-4 inches long and often have thorns. The leaves turn bronze, red, orange, or purple color in the Fall. Their flowers have five petals and are white or pink (sometimes red) and their fruits reddish or yellowish. The center of the fruit has five carpels arranged in a star-like pattern, each one containing 1-2 seeds.
Edible Parts and uses:Apples
Precautions: no real precautions.
Find:part shade, sun; open woods, forest edges and openings
Identification:10 to 16 feet.Leaves are simple and alternate, 2½ to 4¼ inches long and 1½ to 2¾ inches wide, the blade broadly oval-elliptic to lance-oblong, often widest above the middle, abruptly tapered to a point, tapered or rounded towards the base, on a 1/3 to 2/3 inch, hairy stalk with a few small glands near the leaf blade. Edges are finely double toothed with blunt teeth and a small gland at the tip of each tooth. Upper surface is dark green, sparsely hairy, the lower surface is lighter and sparsely to densely hairy, especially along the veins.Twigs are reddish brown to gray, smooth or occasionally sparsely hairy. Branches are spreading to ascending with older lateral twigs developing into stout spines that are up to 2 inches long and occasionally compound.Fruit is a purplish red drupe with a thin waxy bloom, about 1 inch in diameter and a single hard seed inside.
Edible Parts and uses:Fruit.
Precautions:no real precautions.
Find:Roadsides; fields; wood borders; waste places.
Identification:The colony-forming smooth sumac is a 10-20 ft. shrub with short, crooked, leaning trunks and picturesque branches. The pinnately compound leaves are alternate, with 13-30 sharp-toothed leaflets on each side of the midrib. Deciduous leaves become extremely colorful in early fall. On female plants, yellow-green flowers are followed by bright-red, hairy berries in erect, pyramidal clusters which persist throughout winter.
Edible Parts and uses:Raw young sprouts were eaten in salad. The sour fruit, mostly seed, can be chewed to quench thirst or prepared as a drink similar to lemonade. Also used as a herb / Spice in cooking.
Precautions:Poisonous leaves.
