mushroomhead
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Wild service tree berries!Hi! I found a wild service tree in the forest of dean not far from where i live. I know that the tree is quite rare now, but according to Richard Mabey they taste very nice when ('Bletted') left to semi-rot.
Has anyone out there tasted the berries and are they worth collecting? 
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gil
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wildfoodjunkie is the wild service tree buff..
But I've had whitebeam (which is a poor relation of the service tree), both bletted and unbletted, and it was well worth collecting. It doesn't get right bletted till Oct/Nov here. Unbletted was very bitter (like the tartest crab apple you can imagine and then some). Bletted was altogether mellower, with apricot undertones as well as apple-ish. I made wine with my whitebeam. It's excellent.
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mushroomhead
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wild service treeThe Whitebeam i've found quite common around where i live, the service tree is quite dark leaved similar to a maple leaf but alot smaller. Its worth knowing about the whitebeam though, i shall wait for the berries to ripen! Cheers!! 
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gil
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BTW, when I was trying to ID the whitebeams last autumn, there were some threads on here in Foraging about wild service trees and service trees. You could try a Search for them, see if there's any useful info.
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wildfoodie
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| Quote: | | wildfoodjunkie is the wild service tree buff.. |
I've only id'd the trees so far, not tried the beries yet but I hope to remedy that in the next few weeks... my only reservation with the trees I found was that they are very tall and I'm not much of a tree climber.... I'm pretty sure that the berries are a delicacy for birds and squirrels when I found my trees last october there was no sign of fruit. So my suggestion ( and plan for this year ) would be to gather them unbletted and pop them in the freezer.
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