Charlotte Foraging #3:- Bayberries (Myrica cerfera)
by Gathering bayberry berries is not as easy as picking apples off of a tree. These berries really cling to their branches plus they are really tiny. Botanists refer to the bayberry berry as a “drupe” which in the botany world is a fruit in which the outer fleshy part surrounds a shell with a seed inside. Other types of drupes are peaches, plums, olives, etc. Enough of the botany talk, we were interested in experimenting with the wax properties of the drupes. So two large bayberry trees and 5+ cups of berries later we had sore hands and enough boiled …