The fruits of the American dogwoods (Cornus florida) are small and hard and not really edible for humans. It’s true that many birds and other animals feed upon them, of course.
By Bill Lawyer
The fruits of the American dogwoods (Cornus florida) are small and hard and not really edible for humans. It’s true that many birds and other animals feed upon them, of course.
Over the past thirty years, the number of American dogwoods growing in Rye’s backyards has greatly diminished. Suffering from droughts and disease, they have been cut down as they’ve withered away.
But they’ve been replaced in many yards by the Asian version of that genus, Cornus kousa. These similarly sized small understory trees produce beautiful white flowers starting in mid-May, about a month later than their American cousins.
In most cases, it’s the lush, bountiful flowers of the Asian dogwoods that have motivated homeowners and landscapers to plant them.
But every few years, as summer comes to an end, we discover another benefit of Cornus kousa – their tasty, edible fruits.
The fruit of the Asian dogwoods seem to vary from year to year. In 2012, for example, the trees around Rye produced very few fruits. And those that did appear were small and dry.
Perhaps it was the very rainy spring this year that has resulted in so many trees producing such vast quantities of large, juicy fruits. It’s truly a cornucopia of Cornus kousa!
Perhaps not coincidentally, the words cornus and cornu (of cornucopia) come from the same root meanings – horn and hard. The ancient hard, hollowed-out horns of rams were used to hold food. “Copia” means bountiful.
In modern depictions, the cornucopia is typically a hollow, horn-shaped wicker basket filled with various kinds of festive fruit and vegetables. In North America, the cornucopia has come to be associated with Thanksgiving and the harvest.
A walk through any residential neighborhood in Rye will result in your encountering one or more Asian dogwoods bursting with fruits at this time of the year. And you don’t need a ram’s horn or wicker basket to collect them – a paper bag will do. But you do need to ask permission of the homeowner, if it’s not your property.
For some reason, most people I talk to have no clue that the fruit are so tasty.
Technically these fruits are classified as globose pink to red compound berries. As they ripen in the late summer into fall, they grow from about a half-inch in diameter to more than two inches. As they mature, they tend to get darker red and increasingly sweet.
From my experience, most people who eat the berries just pick them off the low-hanging branches of the trees and pop them in their mouths. According to some food writers, it’s possible to make them into wine, juice or jelly (see recipe below).
For anyone planning to pick and eat the berries, however, it should be noted that squirrels seem to love them, so don’t wait too long. Certainly they should be picked before the first hard frost.
And that’s the way you can get a tasty treat – right in your backyard.
Recipe:
Harvest and Yarn (http://harvestandyarn.wordpress.com) blogger Georgia shared a recipe using kousa that she devised from her “adventures learning and experimenting with gardening, cooking, and craft.”
Chai Kousa Jam
950g (34 ounces) ripe kousa, quartered
950g (34 ounces) white sugar
1 stick cinnamon
0.5 – 1cm (.2 to .4 inch) fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
5 cloves
3 cardamom pods, bruised
Place fruit and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until all sugar is melted and fruit softens. Add spices and ginger and continue stirring until liquid begins to boil.
Turn heat down to low, and simmer. Mash fruit with a masher to extract more juice, and continue to simmer, stirring occasionally.
To test when the jam is ready, place a teaspoon of liquid on a cold plate. If it’s ready, it should be pretty viscous and not spread far on the plate.
Next, separate the liquid from the solids (seeds, spices, skin) by pouring through a strainer, or loosely woven muslin.
Reheat the liquid, and pour into sterilized jars.
