Late Summer Harvest... - Continued from page 10 When colonists first came ashore in the 1500s, they couldn’t miss the hardy beach plum. Prized for centuries and cousin to the domesticated fruit of the same name, the beach plum thrives in windswept sandy soils from Maryland to Maine. “Creative Commons Beach Plum” by The round, purple fruit August Muench is licensed under CC BY 2.0 contains a large pit and has bitter skin, making it unpleasant to eat raw. But when the fruit is processed into jelly, juice, or wine, the flavor is as distinctively rich as it is deliciously deep. Beach plum shrubs tolerate salt air, but do not reliably produce fruit: many varieties set a crop only once every three or four years, even if they bloomed heavily. Their white flowers “Creative Commons Prunus maritime (Beach Plum)” by Plant Image Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0 bloom during May and June. The fruit that follows (when it follows) is usually ripe enough to pick by the middle of August into September. Most varieties of the fruit are a dark purple when ripe, though smaller than commercial plums found in the store. If you are lucky in your foraging, you can sometimes find a slightly sweeter golden variety. If you see a bush with a brightly colored ribbon tied around it, know that it was already claimed by a fellow forager and find another place to pick. If you’d like to try cultivating beach plum shrubs, check out Oikos Tree Crops, a nursery in Michigan that sells three varieties that can grow successfully on Nantucket.
What should you do with your beach plum bounty? Most harvested beach plums end up in jam or jelly, using a very easy recipe that mixes plums (be sure to include some not-so-ripe plums to take advantage of natural pectin), sugar, and extra pectin if needed. Try adding a cup of port or red wine. Simple though it is, these jars of claret-colored jelly will be prized gifts come winter. Beach plum jelly tastes like a floral version of a not too sweet grape jelly, and it’s delicious on a PB&J, as a condiment with meats, or spread across an English muffin. Another forageable food you don’t have to search high and low for on Nantucket Island are rose hips. Impossible to miss, the small orange and red orbs can be found in late summer and early fall on the rosa rugosa that grow virtually everywhere in the sandy soil of Nantucket. They’re probably on the path you take to the beach and along the road you drive on to get there. A native of East Asia, the beach rose was introduced into the United States as an ornamental plant in the mid1800s. By the early 1900s, it was reported growing all across Nantucket. Rose hips are the seed pods left behind when the delicate roses drop petals and fade away. The hips ripen in autumn, when they turn bright orange-red, and if you can wait to harvest them till after the first frost, they will be easier to work with. Though it is most commonly found dried in teas, the cranberry-like flavor of the rose hip has many other applications in the kitchen. They make a brightly flavored spread not unlike marmalade, sweet and versatile syrups—even ice cream and wine can be made from rose hips. They are also fine to eat raw, though most folks find them much too tart. It is estimated that they contain 4 to 40 times the vitamin C in oranges. Not only are they great to cook with, rose hips have been used for centuries as a natural remedy to a number of ailments.
Photo: Janet Flanagan
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