BERRIES
Issue 28, Summer 2025
Berries on a madrone (arbutus) tree. photo by John F. Williams
BERRIES
Issue 28, Summer 2025
Managing Editor: Sara Noland
(Table of Contents is below this intro)
Welcome to the summer issue of Salish Magazine, where we are celebrating berries. It’s prime time for berries at the U-pick farms here in Snohomish County — strawberries, raspberries, lingonberries, blueberries — a bounty for bakers, jam makers, and city folk enjoying an afternoon adventure in the country. Thickets of Himalayan blackberry soften my heart with their bowers of pale flowers and nubbins of green fruit, reminding me why this bane of native ecosystems was imported so long ago: It’s all about those big purple berry gems, spilling juice and fragrance and late summer memories.
We hope you will enjoy the bounty of berry poems and photographs in this issue. Over the coming weeks we will add more content about the botany and ecology of berries. We’ll be providing a Berries 101 article explaining what fruits truly qualify as “berries” in a botanical sense. (Hint: strawberries and blackberries are not berries, botanically speaking.)
In the mean time, you can see more details about what berries are from a botanist’s perspective and their roles in the ecosystem in our 2021 article, Berries.
Oso Berry plant. photo by Thomas Noland
This summer we encourage readers to look beyond the familiar berries of farms and gardens to the native plants that produce a rainbow of wild berries throughout the year. A berry is a specialized package for delivery of a plant’s most precious resource, its seeds. Each time a bird eats a berry and flies off, it’s carrying a genetic message to a new place — the instructions for growing a tree or shrub or creeping vine. Berries are woven into ecosystems. I like to think about that as I sit in my lawnchair watching berry-gulping robins carry those messages across a blue sky.
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Happy Spring!
Issue 28 — Berries: Table of Contents
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A Rainbow of Berries
by Gunnison Langley
Summer 2025
Berry plants gift us with color. How do berries get their colors? Why are they colorful in the first place? What kinds of berries can be observed locally throughout the year?
Nature Walk in Berry-land
by Lindsey Davidge and Meilani Lanier-Kamaha’o
Summer 2025
Follow some young explorers as they discover berries and other critters and environs. From thimbleberries, to a rough skinned newt, these youngsters do more than observe, they create art
Blackberries of the Salish Sea
by Sarah Ottino
Summer 2025
Blackberries are a culinary delight — or an ecological fright. Three species of blackberry grow around the Salish Sea. One is native, but the other two are invasive species.
Our Rowan Tree
by Thomas and Sara Noland
Summer 2025
In our front yard is a year-round grocery store and rest stop for wild travelers. It is a mountain ash. And it is visited by berry gulpers, sap eaters, and gleaners.
Blush Before the Salmon
by Celeste Hankins
Summer 2025
Along the edges of the Salish Sea, the salmonberries blush first. The rose-pink blossoms give way to amber and ruby fruit as the salmon begin their long journeys home.
Poetry 28 A
by various poets
Summer 2025
In this first of two sections of poetry, five poets share their berry insights and experiences. These include some of the roles the berries play in the ecosystem.
Poetry 28 B
by various poets
Summer 2025
This second of two sections of poetry highlights blackberries (which aren’t really berries). Four poets share many ways that these brambles attract and threaten berry-pickers.
Salish Magazine
Publisher: John F. Williams
Managing Editor: Sara Noland
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Copyright SEA-Media
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