What's flowering as forage in your area

[beeno]

Your Hawthorn blooms in October? Ours after Apple in early June. Love the odor

And the almond flavoured honey.

 

[Antipodes]

I am still puzzled hawthorn berries and flowers?

Does something over there eat the berries, or do they just fall off? The area where I took the photo gets cold winters with bitter days occasionally not getting above 2 or 3 degrees. All the hedges are covered in the berries when leafless. Those trees are survivors from the early days of the colony, almost 200 years old, in the days when the state was anglicised as much as possible.

 

[Antipodes]

Your Hawthorn blooms in October? Ours after Apple in early June. Love the odor

You are spot on as the apples have almost finished. It's just that I'm in the Southern Hemisphere but our seasons don't follow the shortest or longest days like you guys. Summer starts on December the 1st. Autumn on March the 1st, and so on.

 

[Antipodes]

Apparently the foul smell (to some) is from triethylamine (or is it trimethylamine referred to in the article?), which is one of the first chemicals released in a decaying animal tissue ....and rather fascinating about the connection to the plague.

I wonder if it smells nice to some because of the connection to that other smell? See wikipedia...

https://aplacebetweenthetrees.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/hawthorn-the-reeking-may-tree/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylamine

 

[beeno]

Does something over there eat the berries, or do they just fall off? The area where I took the photo gets cold winters with bitter days occasionally not getting above 2 or 3 degrees. All the hedges are covered in the berries when leafless. Those trees are survivors from the early days of the colony, almost 200 years old, in the days when the state was anglicised as much as possible.

Bit of both probably. Must go and pick some apparently very good for you. Going to give dried on my muesli a try. Must give the scent another go as I did not identify it as that rank.

 

[pargyle]

Bit of both probably. Must go and pick some apparently very good for you. Going to give dried on my muesli a try. Must give the scent another go as I did not identify it as that rank.

Hawthorn and Rosehip syrup ... delicious and really easy to make .. stuffed full of Vitamin C to ward off the winter colds and there is something in the hawthorn berries that will lower your blood pressure. I usually start picking around the end of this month ... snipping the ends off the rosehips is a bit of a pain but a small price to pay for a few bottles of elixir. Keeps happily over winter and a spoonful a day is enough ... you can use it as a cordial or just drizzle a bit over some ice cream .. You can just make hawthorn syrup but I like the taste of the rosehips ... brings back my postwar childhood when Delrosa Rosehip Syrup got spooned into me every morning before school ... along with the Fiery Jack for my chapped legs and one of grandads Victory V Lozenges to keep me warm on the way to school. Sorry ... I digress....

 

[E&MBees]

Hawthorn and Rosehip syrup ... delicious and really easy to make .. stuffed full of Vitamin C to ward off the winter colds and there is something in the hawthorn berries that will lower your blood pressure. I usually start picking around the end of this month ... snipping the ends off the rosehips is a bit of a pain but a small price to pay for a few bottles of elixir. Keeps happily over winter and a spoonful a day is enough ... you can use it as a cordial or just drizzle a bit over some ice cream .. You can just make hawthorn syrup but I like the taste of the rosehips ... brings back my postwar childhood when Delrosa Rosehip Syrup got spooned into me every morning before school ... along with the Fiery Jack for my chapped legs and one of grandads Victory V Lozenges to keep me warm on the way to school. Sorry ... I digress....

Do you use a particular recipe for the Hawthorn and Rosehip syrup?
Thanks.

 

[pargyle]

Do you use a particular recipe for the Hawthorn and Rosehip syrup?
Thanks.

Pretty simple really ; It's a rough and ready recipe and you can't really go wrong - the quantities are never an exact science as a lot depends on the quality of the berries you collect.

To make about 1.5 litres of syrup:
1.5 kg hips and hawes (mix of whatever I can forage)
2 to 2.5 ltr water
1 to 1.5 kg granulated sugar (the more sugar the thicker and sweeter the syrup).

Top and tail the hips and destalk the hawes.
Boil them up together in half the water for as long as it takes for them to become really pulpy .. a potato masher when they start softening helps. Once they reach the boil just let them simmer for 15 minutes or so. Let it cool a little and I then strain the mash through a fine colander. Return the mash to the pan and add the rest of the water. Set the first strainings to one side. Bring the mash to the boil again, simmer for 10 to 15 minutes and strain again through the colander. Press out as much of the juice as you can and discard the mash to the compost bin.

Combine the strainings into one container and give them a stir. Strain the resultant liquid through a jelly bag or muslin - the hips are full of tiny hairs and you really want to get these out so the finer the jelly bag the better. I leave the jelly bag to drain overnight .. if you like your syrup clear don't press the bag .. if you don't mind cloudy syrup press every last bit of juice out.

The juice goes into a clean pan ...... bring to the boil and reduce the syrup down ... you want it to be sort of syrupy .. reduce it by about a third or a half ... add the sugar (you can use honey or a mix of honey and sugar) ... roughly the same weight of sugar as the juice and heat gently to dissolve the sugar .. bring back to the boil simmer for a few minutes and then take off the heat - allow to cool a little - then decant into sterilised jars or bottles. It will keep well in a cool dark place but once opened keep in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks. I use recyled small green beer bottles with re-usable plastic caps. A bottle lasts me about a couple of weeks at a spoonful a day.

As I said .. it's a rough recipe and one I tend to do by eye and instinct. It does not scale up well - I tend to make it in batches if I manage to pick more than the 1.5Kg.

 

[E&MBees]

Pretty simple really ; It's a rough and ready recipe and you can't really go wrong - the quantities are never an exact science as a lot depends on the quality of the berries you collect.

To make about 1.5 litres of syrup:
1.5 kg hips and hawes (mix of whatever I can forage)
2 to 2.5 ltr water
1 to 1.5 kg granulated sugar (the more sugar the thicker and sweeter the syrup).

Top and tail the hips and destalk the hawes.
Boil them up together in half the water for as long as it takes for them to become really pulpy .. a potato masher when they start softening helps. Once they reach the boil just let them simmer for 15 minutes or so. Let it cool a little and I then strain the mash through a fine colander. Return the mash to the pan and add the rest of the water. Set the first strainings to one side. Bring the mash to the boil again, simmer for 10 to 15 minutes and strain again through the colander. Press out as much of the juice as you can and discard the mash to the compost bin.

Combine the strainings into one container and give them a stir. Strain the resultant liquid through a jelly bag or muslin - the hips are full of tiny hairs and you really want to get these out so the finer the jelly bag the better. I leave the jelly bag to drain overnight .. if you like your syrup clear don't press the bag .. if you don't mind cloudy syrup press every last bit of juice out.

The juice goes into a clean pan ...... bring to the boil and reduce the syrup down ... you want it to be sort of syrupy .. reduce it by about a third or a half ... add the sugar (you can use honey or a mix of honey and sugar) ... roughly the same weight of sugar as the juice and heat gently to dissolve the sugar .. bring back to the boil simmer for a few minutes and then take off the heat - allow to cool a little - then decant into sterilised jars or bottles. It will keep well in a cool dark place but once opened keep in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks. I use recyled small green beer bottles with re-usable plastic caps. A bottle lasts me about a couple of weeks at a spoonful a day.

As I said .. it's a rough recipe and one I tend to do by eye and instinct. It does not scale up well - I tend to make it in batches if I manage to pick more than the 1.5Kg.

Thanks, I shall give it a try.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Thanks, I shall give it a try.

I use a lot of hedgerow medicine. Too late now but for next year make some elderberry elixir. Stan calls it my "Hocus Pocus" It keeps colds at bay brilliantly and keeps your immune system up.
I make hedgerow jelly with Haws,Sloes,Hips,Bullaces,Rowan and Blackberries every year and this year are the black currants have been turned into Ribena

 

[Erichalfbee]

Does something over there eat the berries, or do they just fall off?

We have hordes of Fieldfares and Redwings that strip the berries.
They come around now.
We have Rowan tress in the garden and earlier in the year our resident blackbirds take all the berries in a week

 

[Antipodes]

We have hordes of Fieldfares and Redwings that strip the berries.
They come around now.
We have Rowan tress in the garden and earlier in the year our resident blackbirds take all the berries in a week

I've never heard of either bird, but blackbirds we have lots of.

I took this fuzzy photo earlier this year of a bird here feasting on hawthorn berries. It's a bird only found in Tasmania, the Green Rosella. Photo 1.

Then I had one cheeky one come right up to me to eat oak acorns as I took a beekeeping breather a few months back.

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

Had me well and truly puzzled there for a minute until I realised you were down ... and found it strange how you guys do Christmas. There's something strange walking out of a shopping centre playing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" into 40+ degrees of unrelenting sun.

That is why, as I read, the scientists in Antarctica have Christmas at 25 Dec in their midsummer, and also a Midwinter Feast near 21 June in their winter.

 

[GuyNir]

I've never heard of either bird, but blackbirds we have lots of.

I took this fuzzy photo earlier this year of a bird here feasting on hawthorn berries. It's a bird only found in Tasmania, the Green Rosella. Photo 1.

Then I had one cheeky one come right up to me to eat oak acorns as I took a beekeeping breather a few months back.

Fab 3rd pic

 

[Swinton apiaries]

Ivy ivy and more ivy in the derbyshire dales at the moment keeping the lady’s Busy when they get out in this weather

 

[katbee]

There's a nice River Cottage recipe for hawthorn 'ketchup' (Hawthorn Berry Ketchup Recipe - Great British Chefs). Our trees are laden with berries this year, and my plan for the weekend is to make a few jars of it. Yum.

Lots of ivy here, and the fuchsia is still flowering away in West Cork. It's naturalised down here, so the hedgerows are full of it. It seems to flower endlessly!

 

[Michael ECB's]

That's interesting as I offered up a branch from that tree yesterday with flowers on it for my wife to smell, and she dry retched. Now that might sound cruel to some, but I did warn her!

Each to his/her own I suppose.....
I walk past the dairy and smell the newly "wet" cement in the morning as the cows enter the milking area,,,,, it makes me hungry every time !
Perhaps some of you will be aware of what a dairy cow does as it enters the yard or steps onto cement...
Actually,,, a lot of things make me hungry.... Smell of Honey makes me think of smoked Pork Neck....
Counselling perhaps?

 

[Michael ECB's]

Oak and Honey Locust starting to "wake up" here and the bees are loving it.....
Hello Summer !

 

[Antipodes]

Little video
View attachment VID_20201022_172954578 (1).mp4

 

[F.F.Stung]

Me too...a childhood reminder that is. It's a strong scent.

We had a copse in a creek line. Really special place as the leaves and flowers came out and they grew as trees as the animals ate the lower leaves. This is a photo from a week ago from another spot. Sort of Christmas colours there with the red, green and white I thought.View attachment 22642.

The berries are a potent herbal medicine for many heart complaints. High or low blood pressure (this unbelievable normalising ability is due to it strengthening the heart ,and the cleansing and strengthening of the arteries) A lot of heart complaints arise from stress and worry, and hawthorn is known to relieve stress, and is totally safe. The daily dose is to drink the juice strained from from about 20 berries brought to the boil in cupful of water. Burst the berries (not the stones)with a masher to extract all the juice.