Our first year here in my new home I have been observing the trees and bushes around me. And around late summer to autumn I started to see fruits and nuts forming on some of the surrounding trees. I found a pignut hickory, black cherry tree, asparagus, lowbush blueberries, raspberries and multiple chestnut trees, my foreman found a persimmon tree and many blueberry bushes as well. I am sure there are even more out there waiting for us to find them. Bearing tasty fruit and nuts.
As I walk through my property I catalog my findings and mark them with a tree safe tape. My plan is to return during the winter and cut away others trees around it to give them more light and spacing to grow bigger.
Pignut Hickory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carya_glabra
Finding this tree so close to home was quite nice find. It has to be over 50-75' tall and looks to produce these nuts in abundance. Online it says they taste bitter, though the ones we have tried did not have that flavor. Though none the less I am pretty sure these are the Pignut variety as the smell of the skin is strong on them, unlike shagbark from what I have read.
The leaves along with the nuts that form is what helped me identify that it was a Hickory tree, but to figure out if its Pignut or Shagbark I scratched at the nuts flesh. The smell that came off of it was a strong fragrance making me think its Pignut.
Taking some of them back inside we cracked them open, just about every time the shell went flying everywhere lol... from what I have seen I may need a vice like tool that slowly cracks them. We got one or two open with a little bit of nut meat and it was quite tasty.. no bitterness detected.
These nuts were easy to spot at the time due to their spiny shell, but at this point they have all dropped. I marked the trees using some tape and will come back next year and hopefully get some.
I think I found a few of them, though not all were bearing fruit.
Marked them just in case so I can check back next year.
I was not the first one to spot this tree, my foreman did. But I found it later on and then pointed it out to him. He was like "I know" so now we both know. He said the deer like to eat these and he does too. So we shall see who gets the first ripe fruit... the deer or my foreman.
Common persimmon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_virginiana
These fruits take awhile to mature, we caught them early.
A few weeks later, they are ripening up.
The tree is filled with them!
Soon it will be time to try them.
Honestly I have not had wild persimmons, curious their flavor.
Seems like the tree needs a little care, the leaves do not look so happy. But maybe this is what it does when winter comes around.. Not sure.
This tree is quite old, but I can see cherries up in the trees during its season. I have found many other of these trees, smaller ones around the property. Marking them and checking back next year to see if they produce.
Wild black cherry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_serotina
Not sure how I can get to the cherries up in this old tree. They are 20-30 feet up.
This tree has seen better days, I gave it a good limb trimming getting rid of all the dead branches. Luckily we got to harvest a bunch of apples from this tree and made some good apple sauce with it.
Crab apple tree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus
Wood peckers have been going at this tree for years, yet it still lives and produces tasty fruit.
Amazing such a nasty looking tree is still alive and seemingly happy.
Blackhaw is a plant I planned on buying, but now I found them out in the wild I will just visit this plant every so often and see if its bearing fruit.
Blackhaw
Using apps like Plantnet and Plant ID really helps me figure out possible species when spotting a plant, tree or bush of interest. This bush can produce berries that can be made into jams or jellies.
