A local weedy fruit used for millenia in the UK is Sambucus Nigra, Black Elder/berry/flower. The berries are edible when cooked, but they contain troublesome levels of cyanogenic gylcosides.
Commercial cultivar berry bunch
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/bd4c71_38285c418f184fdca8a9b1de6f1c75c9~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_540,h_726,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Elderberry1.jpg)
Typical Wild-style plant, perhaps a decade old.
(https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/30/2021/06/Elder-tree-c9ba9fe.jpg?quality=90&fit=700,350)
This plant has potential for serious breeding in my opinion:
Hardy from zone 4 - 9
Perennial, living for up to 60 years.
Quite vigorous and tolerant of both boggy (almost swampy) and drier, poorer and richer soils.
Extremely easy to propogate via cuttings (As in, cut a new stem, slap it in water and it roots within a week), probably evolved as a swampy adaptation.
Can fruit in its first year given good enough conditions, though ive heard 2-3 years is needed for full fruiting.
Easy to intentionally kill unlike cane berries.
Can already produce large yields of fruit.
Looks quite pleasant in a garden with lovely fluffy flowers.
Several closely related species for hybridisation potential. Afaik racemosa and nigra are already native to both europe, asia and america.
Downsides:
All slightly toxic raw, and the seeds are said to be quite toxic, especially of racemosa.
Berry flavour varies from quite good to completely tasteless, though the flowers always smell good.
Plant structure is quite messy, it just grows in whatever direction it pleases.
According to this:
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/elderberry/germinating-elderberry-seeds.htm
They need a double stratification for up to 7 months. Perhaps GA would shorten this.
Species
Uses
Elderflower Cordial is very popular in the UK and most people know of Elderflower Pancakes. The berries can also be used to make wine, both red and white (using white cultivars).
I believe the germans call it Gluwhein
Here is a farm fairly near me that sells wine and cordial.
Www.bushbarnfarm.co.uk
Anthocyanins
These are all the rage these days with people even GMOing toms to be purple.
From the papers I browsed Sambucus Nigra
has around 3-5x the anthocyanins per weight of blueberries, one paper finding cultivated had more than wild.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6650832/
Here is one paper that analysed in Nigra.
Current Cultivation
This is already farmed, but im sure improvements can be made, especially on cyanogenic content. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7961730/
This paper analysed two cultivars and found neither had too much but more importantly that one, Ozark, had in general less than another, Ozone. A wider analysis of a bunch of cultivars and wild samples could help produce a very low cyanogen fruit.
Uk Agroforestry has a dozen cultivars, though I cant find any real comparison online.
https://www.agroforestry.co.uk/page/1/?s=sambucus&post_type=product
Diseases
The main diseases I can see are verticillium wilt and anthracnose. There is a large enough pool of genes that some resistance can probably be found. Other than this, it seems fairly disease free.
Thats all im writing. I may go buy a cultivar though im sure my family will attack me, considering they grow wild everywhere here. Perhaps in summer ill go around measuring berry weights or something.
Here in the US we have Sambucus nigra ssp. caerulea in the West and Sambucus nigra ssp. canadensis in the East. I have the former in the front yard and the latter in the back as well as a possible hybrid seedling though it may just be caerulea.
Sambucus nigra ssp. nigra is a fairly common ornamental as well. I drive by a red leaved cultivar every day on the way to work.
Its very interesting that the nigra species complex can be found across the entire northern hemisphere. Wonder how that happened.
https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1139/g66-023?journalCode=cgc
According to this there were cultivars for sale in the 1800s. I dont know how big "bigger than average" is for elderberries though.
https://www.mdpi.com/2311-7524/9/4/488
This paper is the best ive found and analyses the crop in a modern context, especially part 4. It suggests that the crops cultivation collapsed in the early 1900s due to the advent of industrial agriculture and due to subsequent neglect it has since then not been a target for food breeding, only for ornamental landscaping.
It says "There is little doubt" with intra and interspecies breeding the crop can be improved significantly. SOUNDS GOOD.
It also says there is a mechanical and spoilage issue: the berries do indeed not last very long and it claims machines struggle to harvest it, but you can use a pole snipper and a net to easily and rapidly harvest amounts useable for a family even high up, since all the berry stems join together like the Multiflora trait.
I make jelly and pie. I like to mix with apples for both. Have also used some plums for the jelly.
Whats the flavour like? Ours is subtle and blackberrish
I made elderberry wine once...
Wasn't good.
I made elderberry syrup once... yummy.
Mostly, I just allow the songbirds to get the fruit...
Quote from: Adam Igra on 2024-02-14, 11:32:45 PMWhats the flavour like? Ours is subtle and blackberrish
Tastes like elderberry cough drops.
Never attempted alcohol myself. Might buy a kit for my pa to try, probably best to start with a beer though.
Wine is easy...
It's just that elderberry wine is harsh, and they say to age it for a year before trying to drink it.
Most fruit wines can be consumed as soon as they clarify.
I used to just put fruit that I ran through a blender... or mashed with a potato masher in a 5 gallon bucket with a bag and a half sugar, and enough water to reach the top... put lid on bucket, leave in corner for a month or so...
When mixture clarified, I might bottle wine, or more likely, serve from bucket...
Peach was about the best.
Quote from: Adam Igra on 2024-02-14, 09:26:17 PMIt's very interesting that the nigra species complex can be found across the entire northern hemisphere. Wonder how that happened.
Two obvious possibilities:
- The common ancestor of the nigra complex originated at least 150 million years ago and spread across the supercontinent Pangaea. That would suggest that the nigras in North America are native.
- The berries have been widely used by humans and carried with them wherever they go. That would suggest that the nigras in North America are an introduced species.
Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-02-19, 08:14:14 AMTwo obvious possibilities:
- The common ancestor of the nigra complex originated at least 150 million years ago and spread across the supercontinent Pangaea. That would suggest that the nigras in North America are native.
- The berries have been widely used by humans and carried with them wherever they go. That would suggest that the nigras in North America are an introduced species.
The two North American species are native without any doubt. Lots of our flora is circumboreal in distribution in the Northern hemisphere.
I think native has a time requirement: Almost the entirety of the UK was under ice 11k years ago so nearly nothing is native, unless you consider say 10k year old introductions to be native. But how umans have been in the americas for over 15k years.
Perhaps they came by bird though: They look like standard bird nosh.