My American Beautyberry

These grow like weeds in my woods next to my pasture. They love to grow where manure has been dropped. And they provide food for wildlife! I think they are beautiful.

My goodness what a stunning color that is! WOW!

-Julie

I made jelly from my one bush for the first time last year. Made a dozen of the smaller jelly jars. Pretty pastel colored and sweet! Takes a while to strip that much fruit from the branches...but I had to try. And you have so many bushes!

Beautyberry jelly! I never knew they were edible (to humans)...Growing in the same environment are multiple mulberry trees. Now they are hard to strip...but I like them, right off the tree.

How did you find out they were edible?

Can you eat the beauty berries raw?

passi -- don't remember how i found out. don't taste all that great raw. they are so small and it takes a lot to make jelly. :)

broke arm last sat. so type only a little now.

Passi, wonderful weeds you've got there. and edible too.

Soozer, sorry to hear you broke your arm. And at the peak of gardening season too.

Blooms - yeah, ouch! neighbors helped plant bamboo and cardinal flower. so many seedlings and lots of compost so may get a visit from garden fairies to help more :)

Passi- that is just beautiful. Our hot spell seems to be quickly draining the color out of the desert so I am relishing these wonderful photos even more now. With all the prickly pear blossoms we had, maybe we will soon have lots of purple fruit.
This may be dumb but I would love to see a picture of the pastel colored jelly, if you have one, Soozer. I'm trying to imagine what it would look like. Sorry about your arm. ((((soozer)))) good thing about cyber hugs is you can't inflict any pain by touching the 'wrong' spot.

Beautiful! I had a bush from a trade, but after two years and no flowers (and no berries!) it died. I'm not sure if it was the critters tunnelling about or the two years of constant rain that did it in. Might just have to try again.

Soozer - get well soon

thanks for hugs and good wishes. yesterday dr. said is looking good.
will need help with photo of beautyberry jelly...pretty pastel thing :)
sorry yours was 'done in' kathleen. have only the one plant and never tried to gather seeds and try for seedlings?

We have lots of them near the edges of our wooded areas. I hadn't seen the flowers before this year. I seemed to notice the bushes only after the berries formed. Is there a specific recipe you use for the jelly?

bettydee --

Seems I googled for recipes (including DG: More Unusual Canning Recipes thread in the Canning and Freezing forum) and found the general idea and amounts and went from there. Let us know how it turns out! It's my birthday today and I'm giving away jelly from last summer's batch!

p.s. It took so long to pick the fruit-laden beauty berry branches and get it all ready and boiled and strained that I decided to actually make the jelly the next day (NEXT time). Quite labor intensive for the quantity: all day for 12 jars of the tasty stuff.)