Berberidaceae

Barberry Family

Barberries

FAMILY: Barberry family (Berberidaceae) – Berberis genus.

SPECIES: #1 Colorado barberry (Berberis fendleri A. Gray). #2 Fremont’s barberry (Berberis fremontii Torr. = Mahonia fremontii (Torr.) Fedde). #3 red barberry or hollygrape (Berberis haematocarpa Wooton = Mahonia haematocarpa (Wooton) Fedde). #4 creeping barberry or Oregon grape (Berberis repens Lindl. = Mahonia repens (Lindl.) G. Don). #5 threeleaf barberry, agarito, or algerita (Berberis trifoliata Moric. = Mahonia trifoliolata (Moric.) Fedde).

TO UTILIZE AS FOOD: Many (possibly all) species of the Berberis genus, including all those listed above, produce edible berries. The same could be said about berries of the closely related Mahonia genus. Some barberries are dry and hollow. Others are solid and juicy. One thing they all seem to have in common is a resident bug inside! Up to 100% of the barberry crop can be lost to birds, insects, or diseases. If any undamaged berries can be found, they are absolutely delicious. Barberries are also called hollygrapes, in reference to the holly-like leaves and grape-like fruit clusters of certain species. Based on the fruits sampled for this reference, fresh barberries are pleasantly acidic. Cooking reduces this acidity and probably diminishes the nutritional value somewhat. Barberries are suitable for making pies, jellies, desserts, wines, fruit salads, fruit rolls, and other items. They mature anytime from late spring to early autumn depending on the species and they usually contain numerous hard seeds.

Colorado barberry (B. fendleri) produces red, ellipsoid, semi-glossy berries that hang in clusters. Inner portions are filled with seeds. Fleshy layers surround the seeds, but no pulp is found between the seeds. Colorado barberries are rather small and dry compared to other species, averaging 6-9 mm long by 4-7 mm wide. Harvesting the berries is easy, but watch out for spines on the stems! Berry clusters hang in rows along the spiny stems. Colorado barberries taste sweet, tart, and similar to a combination of grapes, lemons, and strawberries. Any bitterness is confined to the seeds. The texture is completely chewable, including the seeds. Stalks readily detach from the berries. Green berries appear in summer and mature many weeks later. They require a long time to mature. Autumn leaves turn various pastel shades of yellow, pink, orange, and red when the berries are finally ready to harvest. Except for flies, the berries are relatively bug-free. Colorado barberry is found primarily in mountain habitats of the Four Corners region in northern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and southeastern Utah.

Fremont’s barberry (B. fremontii) produces two types of fruits: #1 dry, tart, and balloon-like; and #2 moist, sweet, and fleshy. Dry varieties are more common, but fleshy varieties are more desirable. Both are sweet, seedy, and usually loaded with bugs. Fremont’s barberry grows abundantly across northern Arizona and southern Utah, and westward to California. Fruits typically mature in midsummer.

Dry varieties produce berries that are yellow, orange, red, or purple when mature. Sun-facing sides are usually more colorful. Prior to maturity, the berries taste tart and bitter. Beyond maturity, the berries become dry, wrinkled, and worthless as food. At any point, berries of dry varieties are basically just skins covering seeds. They have no fleshy layers. Tearing open the berries to check for bugs, filth, and fungi is highly recommended. Even if the exteriors look good, the interiors can be a mess. Discarding the seeds is unnecessary, but may be desirable. They’re soft enough to chew, but they subtract from the overall appeal. Boiling softens all the parts and reduces acidity. Mature berries of dry varieties are delicious raw or cooked. The texture is completely chewable and the stalks are easily removed.

Moist varieties are vastly superior and highly preferable to dry varieties. They have berries like those of red barberry (B. haematocarpa), but twice as big. Exteriors of ripe berries are normally reddish-purple. Interiors are mostly seeds occupying empty space, but the surrounding layer is thick, fleshy, and juicy. The seeds are firm, barely within a chewable range. The fleshy layers taste similar to grapes combined with strawberries. They’re very sweet, and lack the tartness of dry varieties. Few wild foods in the Canyonlands taste equally good. Harvesting and processing techniques are essentially the same as those of dry varieties, except that fruits of moist varieties can be formed into fruit bars. Since the seeds are firm, and only get firmer when dried, de-seeding the berries prior to forming the fruit bars is a good idea. Mashing the berries to break up the seeds is also helpful. To make fruit bars: cut the berries in half, scoop out the seeds, press the flesh into desired shape, and allow to dry. No cooking is required. The seeds presumably have food value, but they aren’t very good in the fruit bars. They serve better roasted into a coffee-like beverage. The safety of this beverage is uncertain and there is no tradition of using barberry seeds to make coffee. Dried berry halves become thin and brittle. They make delicious candy-like chips.

Red barberry (B. haematocarpa) produces juicy red berries around the beginning of summer. The raspberry-like flavor is outstanding. Although the berries are supposed to be solid, hybridization results in intermediate forms with hollow berries. These hybrids still produce fantastic berries, but the berries may not be as juicy. All the forms produce rather seedy berries, and the seeds are usually difficult to chew. Red barberry shrubs dominate the hillsides from western Texas to central Arizona. They usually produce substantial crops even during prolonged droughts. The desert climate is perfect for drying wild foods. As barberries dry, they become sticky. Care should be taken to shield the harvest from predatory animals and insects. Native Americans relied upon a good barberry harvest.

Creeping barberry (B. repens) produces sweet, tart, dusty, blue berries. Except for the scanty layers of flesh, the berries are primarily seeds occupying empty space. No pulp occurs between the seeds. Any bitterness associated with the flavor is due to the seeds, not the sweet flesh. Seeds are soft enough to chew. Boiling the berries yields a reddish-purple broth similar to grape juice, at least in color. When sufficiently concentrated, it becomes very appealing and suitable as syrup. Fresh or dried berries are about the same size and color. Creeping barberries aren’t the best berries in the forest, but they’ll certainly pass for edible. Drying increases sweetness. Gathering these berries is easy, and gathering them sooner rather than later is wise because animals readily consume the bounty. As the name indicates, creeping barberry spreads. It’s a low-growing plant found throughout western forests that produces clusters of blue berries perched on long stalks from the middle of summer to the beginning of autumn.

Threeleaf barberry (B. trifoliata) is an evergreen shrub that looks very similar to red barberry (B. haematocarpa), except for having 3 leaflets per leaf rather than 5-9 leaflets per leaf. Threeleaf barberry inhabits hillsides, grasslands, and shrublands in Texas, southern New Mexico, and southern Arizona. It blooms early, typically from February to April. Berries are red, round, solid, juicy, sometimes dusty, and produced from April to July. Threeleaf barberry was the only common southwestern species that wasn’t assessed for this reference. The flavor, texture, and aroma of threeleaf barberries are presumably similar to those aspects of red barberries described above.

Wilcox’s barberry (B. wilcoxii) is apparently not reported to be edible, and the following notes are not meant to imply otherwise. Wilcox’s barberry produces clusters of solid, juicy, bluish-purple berries toward the end of summer. Interiors of ripe berries match the exteriors. If the interiors are green, the berries are probably not ready. Unripe berries may look deceptively ripe on the outside. The flavor ranges from unappealing to bland to strange to excellent. It’s typically semi-sweet with slightly odd, tangy, foul, and bitter accents. Harsh accents are usually minimal. Cooking improves the flavor, but fresh or cooked berries taste about the same. The seeds are soft and don’t cause any problems. Wilcox’s barberry is often less ravaged by insects than red-berried species and therefore more likely to produce a crop. It grows abundantly in the mountains of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, often as a dominant ground cover among oak and pine trees. The berries are easy to harvest, but watch out for the spiny leaves. Based on flavor, Wilcox’s barberries are an excellent wild food, but confirmation of their edibility was not possible.

NOTES: Barberry shrubs are easy to recognize, so they’re a good place for new foragers to start. In the course of developing this book, I sampled berries from all species listed above on several occasions, except for threeleaf barberry (B. trifoliata). I highly recommend all of them.

IDENTIFICATION: About 20-25 species of the Berberis and Mahonia genera occur in the United States. Between these two genera, only 7 species are found in the Southwest and Great Basin. For simplicity, all species are hereby retained in the Berberis genus. Leaf shapes are helpful for determining species, and most species have a preferred range. Kofa barberry (B. harrisoniana) is a rare species with 3 leaves and bluish-black berries. Other species are much more common.

Description of Colorado barberry (Berberis fendleri): FORM scraggy shrub about 50-150 cm tall with yellowish inner bark; BRANCHES spiny at the nodes; LEAVES simple; clustered along the branches; deciduous; blades oblanceolate; margins entire or weakly toothed; surfaces often shiny and without dusty coatings; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, and arranged in racemes of 3-15 along the branches; bracts 3; sepals and petals 6, yellow, and free; stamens 6; FRUITS berries red, juicy, ellipsoid, and nonglaucous; seeds numerous; HABITAT forest openings in New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and southeastern Utah; mountains of the Four Corners region; blooming May to July.

Description of Fremont’s barberry (Berberis fremontii): FORM evergreen shrub about 1-3 meters tall with yellowish inner bark; BRANCHES spineless; LEAVES alternate; pinnately compound; leaflets 5-9, oval, thick, and rigid; margins spiny; surfaces moderately to densely glaucous; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, and arranged in racemes of 3-8; bracts 3; sepals and petals 6, yellow, and free; stamens 6; FRUITS berries yellow, orange, red, or purple, large, 12-18 mm in diameter, dry (occasionally juicy), spherical to elongate, inflated, and more or less balloon-like; seeds numerous; HABITAT hillsides and shrublands; primarily of northern Arizona and the surrounding areas; blooming April to June.

Description of red barberry (Berberis haematocarpa): FORM evergreen shrub about 1-3 meters tall with yellow inner bark; BRANCHES spineless; LEAVES alternate; pinnately compound; leaflets 5-9, lanceolate to ovate, thick, and rigid; margins spiny; surfaces moderately to densely glaucous; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, and arranged in racemes of 3-8; bracts 3; sepals and petals 6, yellow, and free; stamens 6; FRUITS berries red or purple, small, 5-8 mm in diameter, juicy, usually spherical, and glaucous; seeds numerous; HABITAT desert uplands to oak woodlands of southern Arizona and southern New Mexico; blooming February to June.

Description of creeping barberry (Berberis repens): FORM low-lying, evergreen shrub about 10-40 cm tall with yellow inner bark; BRANCHES spineless; LEAVES alternate; pinnately compound; leaflets 3-9, elliptic, thin, and flexible; margins with 7-22 spiny teeth; surfaces usually dull; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, and arranged in racemes of 20-40 or more; bracts 3; sepals and petals 6, yellow, and free; stamens 6; FRUITS berries blue, solid, juicy, glaucous, and generally spherical; seeds numerous; HABITAT common throughout the western forests, often as a dominant part of the understory; blooming April to July.

Description of threeleaf barberry (Berberis trifoliata): FORM evergreen shrub about 1-3 meters tall with yellow inner bark; BRANCHES spineless; LEAVES alternate; compound; palmately trifoliate; leaflets 3, lanceolate, thick, and rigid; margins spiny; surfaces moderately to densely dusty; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, and arranged in racemes of 3-8; bracts 3; sepals and petals 6, yellow, and free; stamens 6; FRUITS berries red, juicy, spherical, and often glaucous; seeds numerous; HABITAT Chihuahuan Desert to mid elevations in southern New Mexico; blooming February to April.

Description of Wilcox’s barberry (Berberis wilcoxii): FORM evergreen shrub about 20-160 cm tall with yellow inner bark; BRANCHES spineless; LEAVES alternate; pinnately compound; leaflets 5-9, elliptic, thick, and rigid; margins with less than 10 spiny teeth; upper surfaces glossy; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, and arranged in racemes of 20-40 or more; bracts 3; sepals and petals 6, yellow, and free; stamens 6; FRUITS berries blue, solid, juicy, glaucous, and generally spherical; seeds numerous; HABITAT mountains in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico; blooming April to June.

REFERENCES: #1 Colorado barberry (Berberis fendleri): fruits Couplan (pp. 53-54). #2 Fremont’s barberry (Berberis fremontii): fruits Ebeling (p. 827) and Moerman (p. 150, cited as Mahonia fremontii). #3 red barberry (Berberis haematocarpa): fruits Couplan (pp. 53-54), Ebeling (p. 827), and Moerman (p. 150, cited as Mahonia haematocarpa). #4 creeping barberry (Berberis repens): fruits Couplan (pp. 53-54) and Moerman (p. 151, cited as Mahonia repens). #5 threeleaf barberry (Berberis trifoliata): fruits Couplan (pp. 53-54) and Ebeling (p. 827).