# Not sure what I found



## rhaige9 (Oct 31, 2010)

Down on the Snake River is an old homestead that was incorporated into the Niagara Springs Wildlife Management Area. I love exploring down there. There is a whole grove of little red plum trees, and an old blackberry bush that has been left to run wild. I was picking berries down there today, I've already made five, half pints of jam from the last time I was down there. 

They still grow and irrigate a few crops down there, corn, black oil sunflower seeds, millet, hay... a few old pear trees... the whole grove of small red plums.

Well there is a row of Juniper trees, and in and around them I found these small trees with little black berries on them. 

Leaf placement and structure.
The berries.
and a shot of the lovely mess of the blackberry bramble


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## mtviolet (Jan 17, 2012)

Those are service berries (sarvis berries or saskatoons)


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## rhaige9 (Oct 31, 2010)

I think maybe choke cherries? They don't have the same bottom as the sarvis berries, and the plant isn't shrub like. It's a single tall trunk like a tree. The third pic is the blackberry bramble.


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## Fennick (Apr 16, 2013)

It may be easier to identify them if you cut a couple in half to expose the interior and see if they have pits or seeds. If still in doubt after that post a picture of a fruit cut in half crosswise showing the placement of the pit or seeds in the fruit, and post another picture of the pit or seeds separated from the fruit, washed clean of any pulp and laid out on a piece of paper.

Have you tested one yet by tasting a drop of the juice on the tip of your tongue?


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## rhaige9 (Oct 31, 2010)

I picked half a plastic grocery sack of these. I figured if they were going to the trouble of irrigating the small trees instead of brush hogging at the end of the season like they do around the other trees, they might be something I would want to pick. 

They have a pit right in the center, and like a plum the flesh is squishy and yellow at the pit, and turns to red right against the skin. It's very astringent on the tip of my tongue. I took a pic of the stem end and the bottom end side by side, and pic of the pit and fruit cut open.


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## Fennick (Apr 16, 2013)

I think it looks like black chokecherry or possibly even a mini-plum X chokecherry hybrid. Chokecherries are known to easily cross pollinate with plums, especially Japanese black mini-plums so it could be wild hybrids you found. 

The black mini-plums called black amber plums grow like the picture you showed of the tree you got the fruit from. A straight, long, slim trunk that does not have a lot of big branches growing horizontally or diagonally off the trunk and the fruits grow in compact clusters close to the tree trunk. Black amber mini-plums are very tiny (but not usually quite as small as those you photoed), have a black skin and very dark amber flesh that is rather tart and astringent, but not bitter like chokecherry. I'd try tasting the flesh and see if it has a tart plummy taste. If it's either chokecherry or black amber plum or if it's a hybrid of the two, you should ideally go to the trouble to remove the pits before processing because the pits are poisonous on both kinds of fruits.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Looks like our choke cherries too. Here the trees have grown tall too.

 Al


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## Ozark Mountain Jewel (Jul 12, 2009)

looks like choke cherries to me as well


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## farmerDale (Jan 8, 2011)

definitely chokecherries. They make a wonderful jelly!


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## rhaige9 (Oct 31, 2010)

So I'm just getting around to having time to be able to do anything with these today. They've been in my fridge. Do I run these through like my black berries? Heat and mash, then run through the food mill to remove skins and pits, or do I have to remove the pits from all those tiny berries before i heat them?


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