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David Douglas

Lynsey Payne Fruit Press, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

David Douglas was born in 1799 at Scone and went to school at Bridgend., as he got kicked out of his first school. There’s a plaque on the wall next to the Isle of Skye Hotel commemorating the life of this son of Perth. He worked for the Earl of Mansfield as an apprentice, and it appears his abilities were soon recognised as he journeyed at an early age to a garden in Fife, and later to Glasgow Royal Botanic Garden.

He was chosen by the Horticultural Society ( now Royal ) to collect plants and specimens of interest from America. He boarded the Ann Maria bound for New York at Liverpool on 5th June 1823, only to find the tide was too low for them to move so he took the opportunity to botanise on land for the day! What a man! Eventually weighed anchor on the 6th and made the journey across the Atlantic to Long Island which was sighted on 31st of June, where he spent the next 5 months collecting plants and sending specimens back to the Horticultural society in London.

The woodland landscape of Perthshire today is partly as a result of Douglas and other botanists sending home conifers from far flung places of the World. Of particular interest to appletreeman is his interest in vegetables and the orchards of the New World.

One of his first observations was the orchards on Long Island! He went to the Vegetable Market, The Fulton, on the 10th and observed an immense variety of plums, and early damsons. Also an abundant supply of pears, peaches and apples. On the 12th he crossed the Hudson to see more fruit orchards, including a Dutchman with 20 acres of peaches and 24 varieties! This man grew rootstocks from seed and budded them in August just like we do today!

David was impressed with Plum Washington which Dr Hossack procured for him. At Burlington on the 20th, David met W. Coxe, who was busy with a cider harvest! On the 23rd he visited Philladelphia’s market, which he thought better than New York’s.

Mr Hogg looked after many of the plants he procured on his travels. He put some osage apples in spirits. Back near New York on the 2nd Sept he saw some Seckel Pears, and an Isabella Grape 75 feet long. He visited West Point and observed more fruit, and then boarded the Richmond steamboat to Albany. What did he do first..yeah visited the Veg Market!

On the way to Little Falls he observed cider presses and orchards everywhere. Mostly apples and a few varieties of plums. He found a place called Caledonia and full of Scots! On the River Detroit he found a wild pears growing and in the old French settlements he saw 8 to 10 varieties of apples called red, white and black. Also pears, probably brought in from France by the immigrants in the previous century.

He found a large and tasty crab apple near Amherstburg. Is this the place Patrick Sinclair set up? He planted an orchard there apparently to supply his troops.

It was at this point that David’s assistant ran off with his stuff when he was up a tree, and when he got down he couldnt control the horse because he couldnt speak French! You couldn’t make it up. He then worked his way to Niagara and Canada, and found the ‘Pound Pear’ being grown. Also Magnum Bonum Plum (egg plum), Blue Orleans and Washington. Also Black Prince and Hamburgh vines.  Then to Rochester and Albany and observed more vines, White Sweet Water, Grizzly Fontignan and Malmsey. Apples and Pears but Plums faring better.

On his travels in Burlington, he got two bottles of cider, one made from wine-sop, the other Virginian Crab apple. On Nov. 14th he went to another veg market (Amboy?), searching for unusual varieties.  On the 12th december he boarded the Nimrod, bound for Great Britain. He had quail, pigeons and ducks ( who were sea-sick), as well as his plants and specimens!

What a rampage he had in the Eastern States of the US!

References: The Plant Hunters , by Charles Lyte, Orbis, 1983 and Journal of David Douglas originally published in 1914 by William Wesley and Son, London.

David Douglas

Lynsey Payne Appletree People, Fruit Press Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

David Douglas was born in 1799 at Scone and went to school at Bridgend., as he got kicked out of his first school. There’s a plaque on the wall next to the Isle of Skye Hotel commemorating the life of this son of Perth. He worked for the Earl of Mansfield as an apprentice, and it appears his abilities were soon recognised as he journeyed at an early age to a garden in Fife, and later to Glasgow Royal Botanic Garden.

He was chosen by the Horticultural Society ( now Royal ) to collect plants and specimens of interest from America. He boarded the Ann Maria bound for New York at Liverpool on 5th June 1823, only to find the tide was too low for them to move so he took the opportunity to botanise on land for the day! What a man! Eventually weighed anchor on the 6th and made the journey across the Atlantic to Long Island which was sighted on 31st of June, where he spent the next 5 months collecting plants and sending specimens back to the Horticultural society in London.

The woodland landscape of Perthshire today is partly as a result of Douglas and other botanists sending home conifers from far flung places of the World. Of particular interest to appletreeman is his interest in vegetables and the orchards of the New World.

One of his first observations was the orchards on Long Island! He went to the Vegetable Market, The Fulton, on the 10th and observed an immense variety of plums, and early damsons. Also an abundant supply of pears, peaches and apples. On the 12th he crossed the Hudson to see more fruit orchards, including a Dutchman with 20 acres of peaches and 24 varieties! This man grew rootstocks from seed and budded them in August just like we do today!

David was impressed with Plum Washington which Dr Hossack procured for him. At Burlington on the 20th, David met W. Coxe, who was busy with a cider harvest! On the 23rd he visited Philladelphia’s market, which he thought better than New York’s.

Mr Hogg looked after many of the plants he procured on his travels. He put some osage apples in spirits. Back near New York on the 2nd Sept he saw some Seckel Pears, and an Isabella Grape 75 feet long. He visited West Point and observed more fruit, and then boarded the Richmond steamboat to Albany. What did he do first..yeah visited the Veg Market!

On the way to Little Falls he observed cider presses and orchards everywhere. Mostly apples and a few varieties of plums. He found a place called Caledonia and full of Scots! On the River Detroit he found a wild pears growing and in the old French settlements he saw 8 to 10 varieties of apples called red, white and black. Also pears, probably brought in from France by the immigrants in the previous century.

He found a large and tasty crab apple near Amherstburg. Is this the place Patrick Sinclair set up? He planted an orchard there apparently to supply his troops.

It was at this point that David’s assistant ran off with his stuff when he was up a tree, and when he got down he couldnt control the horse because he couldnt speak French! You couldn’t make it up. He then worked his way to Niagara and Canada, and found the ‘Pound Pear’ being grown. Also Magnum Bonum Plum (egg plum), Blue Orleans and Washington. Also Black Prince and Hamburgh vines.  Then to Rochester and Albany and observed more vines, White Sweet Water, Grizzly Fontignan and Malmsey. Apples and Pears but Plums faring better.

On his travels in Burlington, he got two bottles of cider, one made from wine-sop, the other Virginian Crab apple. On Nov. 14th he went to another veg market (Amboy?), searching for unusual varieties.  On the 12th december he boarded the Nimrod, bound for Great Britain. He had quail, pigeons and ducks ( who were sea-sick), as well as his plants and specimens!

What a rampage he had in the Eastern States of the US!

References: The Plant Hunters , by Charles Lyte, Orbis, 1983 and Journal of David Douglas originally published in 1914 by William Wesley and Son, London.

Drowning in Pomes….

Margaret Lear Autumn, Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Cider & Ale, Dishes/Comestibles, Flora, Fruit, Hedgerow, Jam, Nuts, Pasture, Wild Food & Wild Things, Wine Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s not that we haven’t been foraging, just that Andrew KEEPS BRINGING HOME MORE APPLES AND PEARS and I think we are drowning in them, so have scarcely had time to blog. (plus lots work on at college at present).

The worst is, they are all different varieties which he’s trying to identify or photograph or just moon over and there are crates and crates of the b**gers I’m not even allowed to touch, then all of a sudden they are fermenting all over the floor and it’s all a bit mind-boggling really. I am an apple widow.

Anyway that aside I’ve foraged and made these since I last wrote: rowan jelly, rowan berry wine, hazelnuts, elderberries for freezer, brambles, elderberry wine, quince jelly (using japonica quinces) and Andrew has permitted a small selection of the apple bing to be made into cider. It is a disgusting, thick brown soup of a cider at present, emitting a sludgy foam from the top of the demijohn. It is to be regretted that before we made it I had been suffering from a gastric bug (NOT from wild food!), which has affected the way I view the cider jar. Nevertheless, I am sure the end result will be as good as it was last year, and am optimistic His Lord High Appletreeness will eventually permit the remainder of the bing to be thus processed. Maybe even some of the pears.

The biggest problem we have with cidermaking is crushing the apples. We have a lovely little press, but unless the fruit is well mashed you don’t get the juice from it and it is a long, slow process. A 10lb weight into a bucket is OK but broke the bucket; James’s mechanical chip-maker is a start but we really have to get a proper mincer. The off-putting brown colour comes from tannin, and won’t do any harm, some apples just have lots in them. Keswick Codlins made up the large amount of the apples we used, but there were others – James Grieve, Lord Derby, Grenadier, Bramley and “various Laxton type things” (quote). No real cider apples – told A he needs to develop a Scottish cider apple.

The Quince Jelly also benefitted from a dose of Bramley for setting quality – and it is an exquisite jelly. I know Japonica quinces aren’t strictly wild food but they might as well be, as so many people grow the things as ornamental shrubs with never a clue they are cultivating a valuable food source.

Not been much on the fungi front – we have had a few weeks of dry weather and haven’t found anything new or in remarkable quantity or quality for a while. A very interesting mushroom is developing on a log in the garden; yet to be identified. More later!

PS. Sloes about ready to pick….

Russula Mushrooms

Margaret Lear Autumn, Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Crumble, Fruit, Fungi, Hedgerow, Jam, Pickle, Pine Woods, Pudding, Summer, Wild Food & Wild Things Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

My favourite fungi to eat at present are Blackish-Purple Russulas (Russula atropurpurea). They are SO tasty and have a lovely nutty texture. Be very careful not to muddle them with the poisonous scarlet red Russula emetica (The Sickener) or the Beechwood Sickener, which is also bright red but found under beech of course. R. atropurpurea is claret-coloured, with a distinctly darker, blackish centre. We are finding many on the village green at Pitcairngreen,  also there are Charcoal Burner Mushrooms (Russula cyanoxantha), Common Yellow Russla (R. ochroleuca) and R. xerampelina. All edible and very tasty.

Found other species of Russula on our latest wild food ramble, including – we think – the rare Russula obscura, which we didn’t pick of course.  Lots of Tawny Grisettes, Chanterelles and Boletus species too – some early Bay Boletus and a couple of Ceps (B. edulis) which were appallingly maggoty. Rowan berries were just about ready, but I’m holding off till the crab apples over the fence are ripe as  I like to add them to Rowan berries when making jelly to get a better set. Meanwhile Andrew is coming home regularly laden with “feral” plums, damsons and cherry-plums of differing shades (Prunus cerasifera), which I really love. They all go off quickly so have made plum and courgette chutney as well as several crumbles, and will be making some jam this week too.

At Elcho Castle we helped pick some of the first eating apples (Discovery and Beauty of Bath) and bore home a big bagful to finish ripening. Have also eaten brambles off the bushes, so it’s that season again, summer nearly over and autumn fruitfulness to enjoy!

Blaeberry Harvest

Margaret Lear Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Fruit, Fungi, Hedgerow, Jam, Nuts, Pine Woods, Pudding, Smoothies, Summer, Wild Food & Wild Things Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

We’ve been entertained since last weekend by a huge caterpillar on the willow herb outside the kitchen window – an elephant hawk-moth. S/he is still there, on the second full stem which is being systematically stripped of leaves, but is getting fatter and slower. The cat is scared of it.

We also had visitors, Tim and Gill and their daughters Lucy and Alice, and as is customary they were pressganged into picking blaeberries (bilberries). This absorbing task yielded enough of these tasty and nutritious fruits for jam, cakes, puddings, breakfasts and the freezer…. and there’s plenty more if we are back in the right habitat, which is acid woodland. Lucy was quite revolting with her blaeberries – squashed them to a mush in their plastic bag, bit off the corner of the bag and sucked the pulp out. Ugh! Fruit Smoothies the rustic way I suppose. Tim and Andrew were sidetracked by some nice big chanterelles, and Tim and I collected honey fungus on the way back – a big show of these and more to come. They were delicious in omelettes. There are a few other mushrooms about just now – several of the Russual genus are showing their faces, but not enough to get a selection of edible species, and in the Millenium Wood Tawny Grisettes (much chewed by slugs) mix with The Blusher (Amanita rubscens). We don’t eat the Blusher. It’s said to be edible, but a. it looks a bit like the poisonous Panther Cap which is also about just now and it wouldn’t take much of a deviant Panther Cap to get mistaken and b. so many creepy crawlies have already eaten it by the time we get there anyway.

Hazelnuts are swelling and becoming obvious in our local copse.

Wet wet wet…

Margaret Lear Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Fungi, Hedgerow, Summer, Wild Food & Wild Things, Wine Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It has rained so much and so heavily since our return from holiday that I’ve scarcely been on a walk, and when I have I’ve got too drowned to hunt for wild food very much. Plus the weather which makes foraging tricky makes the garden grow prodigiously, so that we in the midst of a glut, of salads, courgettes, broad beans, tree spinach, spinach spinach, soft fruit, cultivated burdock, sugar pease and goodness knows what else – mammoth chutney and freezing operations, and more winemaking have been required.

Some summer fungi like the wett, of course, and there are probably more out there than we’ve managed to get to so far, but this will be remedies soon I hope. Andrew found some field mushrooms at work, unfortunately, so did some little flies who laid eggs in them. We picked an impressive bag of chanterelles yesterday, enough for a meal, and there were a couple of Yellow Russulas (Russula lutea) and Tawny Grisettes as well. There was one Cep (Boletus edulis), but it stayed where it was because again the flies and slugs were already there.

We also laid into some wild gooseberries, raspberries and a selection of cherries that hadn’t yet been blown or washed off the trees – they vary so much in sweetness and flavour Andrew decided to collect the pips of the nicest ones and grow them…. you can see how readily Homo sapiens went from a foraging lifestyle to deciding it would be easier to grow your own, and carrying out a bit of selective breeding…

PS. He managed to get to some field mushrooms today before the flies and before the man with the mower – very tasty.

Orkney, Oysters and Oysterplant

Margaret Lear Dishes/Comestibles, Fauna, Flora, Pasture, Seashore, Seaweed, Summer, Vegetables, Wild Food & Wild Things Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

We had a ridiculously wonderful week’s holiday in Orkney.  Expecting windswept, wet and cold marginal land where nothing grows, but instead found fertile, weather-rich  (every kind in a day) and unique countryside, wrapped in glittering sea and sky, nice cheese, good beer, bere-barley bannocks, and Andrew, bless him, even found an apple tree with apples on within minutes of getting off the ferry (reported, doubtless with pictures, on his website www.appletreeman.co.uk) . There were plenty of seaweeds to choose from – bladder wrack, serrated wrack, sea lettuce, kelp (Laminaria digitata), sugarweed (Laminaria saccharina) and gutweed (Enteromorpha intestinalis) for starters! Most seaweeds are cookable when camping, even with our primitive trangia, because all they need is a wash and a rapid stir-fry. I do find the filmy ones easier, though, because you don’t need to cut them up. Wish we were nearer the coast at home, then I could experiment with different cooking methods.

Orkney is famed for its fish and seafood, and although we had to buy them, it was a wonderful near-neolithic experience picknicking on a beach by a prehistoric village on dived native oysters (Ostrea edulis) with Orkney oatcakes. Thanks to the oyster man for lending us his oyster knife!

We spent much time (between visiting prehistoric sites), botanising. Went in search of Scotland’s endemic primrose (Primula scotica) and found it, in abundance, on the spectacular cliffs at Yesnaby. We were in between flowering periods, so it was mostly seed heads, but an endemic in its native habitat is a wonderful find for a plant twitcher. However, we had the scary experience there of being dived on by bonxies, or great skuas, beastly great birds almost as aggressively territorial as Homo sapiens… Artcic skuas were about, too, and on the island of Eday (LOVELY place! LOVELY cake too, thanks Chris and Peter!) we watched red-throated divers on Mill Loch. Everywhere, the wild flowers were so abundant it was heavenly, the road verges providing the sort of floral display Perth Council pays good money to get; I can’t remember all we saw now, but three edible plants stand out:

Rose-root (Sedum roseum), clinging to the steep, deep edges of a GLOUP (basically a huge pit in the cliff due to the lower strata caving in). I have rose-root in the garden and sell it, but have never seen it in the wild before.

The same is true of Scots Lovage,, which I was thrilled to find sprouting freely on the shingle beach below the campsite. It was delicious – stronger in flavour than my garden specimen. Annoying how it obviously seeds itself merrily on a stony beach, but can I get the seeds from mine to germinate?

And on the same beach, one I’d only ever seen in books, the Oysterplant (Mertensia). With blue-grey, succulent leaves, and azure blue flowers, this member of the borage family is rare in the wild, and you wouldn’t dream of picking very much of it even though it was plentiful on this beach. It is absolutely beautiful. It is so named because the leaves are said to taste of oysters. I love oysters, as you’ve heard, and if you’ve never had one, imagine a taste that is the smell and lazy feel of dipping in rock pools on a clean coast on a warm, summer’s day. A plant that tastes like that?

Be assured, the Oysterplant really does!

The wildest thing I saw in Orkney was coming back from Eday to Kirkwall on the ferry. It was a hot, sunny evening, the sea calm and sparkling. I stood on deck and shut my eyes, just enjoying the sunshine and the peace and sea-smells. When I opened them, a minke whale surfaced and went down, up a few more times, then gone. I’d never seen a whale before. What can you say. It was magic.

Wickedly Wild Strawberries

Margaret Lear Berries, Cordial, Dishes/Comestibles, Fruit, Hedgerow, Jam, Pudding, Smoothies, Summer, Vegetables, Wild Food & Wild Things Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

With so much fresh food coming out of the vegetable and fruit garden just now, there’s hardly time, let alone need, to forage for anything wild. It’s been hot and dry, so I’m not expecting much in the way of more fungi, but this week we’ve had a couple of downpours, so I must go and check out the woods soon.

I don’t have to wander far for one wild food mainstay, the wild strawberry, which starts in June and continues right through to the autumn. Andrew had one plant – one! – in his latest abortive attempt at a rock garden by the front door and from there it has smothered the alpines, flowed freely along the cracks in the paving, inserted itself at the base of the wall and marched off down the path towards the gate.

(I digress, but, much as we love alpine plants and admire them,  people like us shouldn’t be allowed to own them. Any plant so lacking in thuggish attributes doesn’t stand a prayer in our garden, given our predilection for rampant weeds like variegated ground elder and croppable monsters like Burdock and Bistort. And after all, there are some excellent botanic gardens and plant collections around here where we can visit happy alpines that are cared for as they deserve.)

So the wild strawberries hold sway, and we share them with a number of birds, for there are enough for us all. (Although I have to say the sheer greed of our resident blackbird is awe-inspiring. He pigs so many of our raspberries and blackcurrants sometimes he is seriously challenged when it comes to flying off and just squats still all day in a feathery-bothered heap under the bushes.)  I sprinkle them liberally over my breakfast cereal, make wild strawberry smoothies, muffins and any number of desserts. Gathering enough for a decent batch of jam or wine would be possible, but so far I haven’t had the patience! The fruits are small, but packed with flavour. We’re also gathering wild bilberries, or blaeberries, now – these are incomparable, messy and tasy, and make excellent jam. Maybe I’ll try a mix of the two.

I gathered the last of the elderflowers today and made another batch of cordial. Maybe it’s the recession making me act like there’s rationing and making me horde food, but, well, we gave one bottle of cordial away and there are only two more in the freezer…. Three weeks till the elderflower champagne is ready – I’m looking forward to that!