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Don't eat em Piano Man, buy a medium priced bottle of gin and put em in that. Makes for a lovely summer drink.

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I think that is what I am going to do. It seems a pity to waste them. Same goes for the blackberries growing nearby.

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I have a plant identifier app and have taken a photo of Pianoman’s photo ...... it’s definitely Blackthorn/Sloe.  Go for it Pianoman, buy some cheap Vodka and make Sloe Gin.  (At least I think that’s what you do, without googling it.)

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2 hours ago, The Pianoman said:

 It seems a pity to waste them. Same goes for the blackberries growing nearby.

 

There are so many blackberries growing wild around here, I could collect them on a full-time basis and use them on an industrial scale. And that's only those which are left after other people have already picked their own share.

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Maybe this should be in ' Made my day,' but it's going on here. Just to say " Hooray ! I'm right for once !!

When I was a ranger at Holme Pierrpont, we used to go blackberrying down at the nature reserve, adjacent to the start of the rowing course.

Used to get the fruit by the bucket load and ' Er indoors used to make apple and blackberry pies for all site staff. That were in 1978.

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Any quinces around now? I mean the real types, not those Japanese imposters which could double up as cannon balls. I remember my granny had a quince tree in her garden in Rempstone. She used to make a type of compôte with them. It wasn't very nice to eat - full of gritty bits. 

 

She also had a fig tree but I never saw any fruit on it. As kids we used to break twigs off and use the white sap as "tattoo ink" - as it dried it turned black and was extremely difficult to remove.

 

Anyway, my housekeeper makes a sirop from blackberries (les mûres) by lightly bashing them to break the skins, adding an equal weight of sugar and leaving them to stand for a few weeks in a stone pot similar to a rumtopf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumtopf ). She then pours off the juice and adds about one tenth of its weight of strong spirit or of vinegar. The vinegar version is her treatment for colds and winter ills. The alcohol one is to enjoy as a drink. There are her "secret" ingredients that she puts in to give hers a distinctive cachet. From looking at the dregs put into the compost heap, I think these are orange and lemon peel, coriander seeds and cinnamon.

 

There is also a sureau (elderberry) version of this which I hate - the elderberries around here all seem to be of the tom cat pee type.

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I’ve just taken a photo of your photo CT, using my plant app.  It’s European Dewberry (a species of Brambles) Also known as Blue Bramble, Dewberry

Botanical name:  Rubus caesius


The app I’ve got is ‘Picture This’.   £20 pa.     But you can get free apps that do the same thing. 
 

Next .......... ! 

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Thanks for the replies.

 

I've now looked at a lot of images of European Dewberry and in most of them the ED looks similar to a normal Blackberry. The local ones I photographed never have more than two or three of the black 'globes' and they don't grow as large or developed as this.... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_Dewberry_-_Rubus_caesius_(42153065900).jpg.  

 

I reckon the ones I see are just weak and feeble versions which never fully develop.

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