wild berry id anyone?

wild berry growing in profusion here in Wyoming, bushes grow to about 25 feet, wide as they are tall, berries are dark maroon with five little brown tails on bottom like the dead ends of petals, no inner pit, they are not ripe yet, inside is greenish white, wondering if they are edible?

 

Need more information, can you take a picture? What do the leaves look like? Do the berries grow in clusters?

 

Not enough for me to guess but one of the experts might be more apt to have an idea. But I do have a few questions. Is the berry a single fruit (ie a cherry) or is it compound like a rasberry? Does the plant have thorns? What do the leaves look like? Harry

 

berries hang in little clusters of two to ten, no leaves on clusters, berries are single like cherries, not compound, no thorns, smooth barked, kind of reddish bark, oblong serrated leaves

 

Try Amelanchier or Aronia

 

thank you...both of those do not have the serrated leaves, although the black chokecherry looks very similar, except for these berries are a lighter maroon and have a little tail on the bottom like an apple or tomato, and of course, serrated leaves

 

Amelanchier do have serrations on the edges or ends of oval-ish leaves, and the berries do have little 5-pointed stars at the end opposite the stem, if that helps.

 

what part of wyo are you seeing these?i lived in southeastern wyo for some years and dont recall seeing these

 

evanston, wyoming bottom of berries have star shaped ends...

 

berry looks almost exactly like arnelanchier but the leaves are narrower

 

Is the leaf serration typical of Amelanchier alnifolia? That is serrated on the end of the leaf and not the enire leaf, then perhaps you are looking at Amelanchier alnifolia var. cusickii. The pictures on the web show mostly oval leafs, but the species here has a more oblong leaf that is not typically as wide as A. alnifolia var. alnifolia. The berries actually end up a dark blue or purple or even black, but take some time to do so, and might be foraged by birds before they get there. Actually the 5 points at the base of the berry (stem end), are probably the persistant (remains after petals drop) calyx (the bracts/leaves just below the flower). Although the height is troublesome as in my experience Amelanchier alnifolia rarely gets as large as 25 feet, but the book says 5m(21 feet) so that's in the realm of possibility.

If not Amelanchier then perhaps another plant from the Rosacea. Chokecherries remain a dark maroon, but the leaf is not what I got from your description. A photo would probably clear up the puzzle immediately if you could get one. Harry

 

Chokecherry "cherries" lack a persistant calyx - that is to say, there is no little 5-pointed star-shaped thingie opposite the stem end, and it was said that there was "no inner pit".

Chokeberry (Aronia sp.) berries have an indented 5-pointed star opposite the stem (at least on Aronia macrocarpa, the only one I'm familiar with). There is no persistant calyx that is raised above the surface of the berry on that species, only the indented pattern. The leaves are finely serrated also.
Hope that helps.

 

ok i do remember something like that,i also lived in evanston,sage st to be exact,i will hunt the web and look.

 

possibly a service berry.look here http://www.blessedbee.ca/encyclopedia/honeybee_plants/serviceberry.php

 

Amelanchier = serviceberry (pronounced sauvice? at least according to two naturalists I met on the trail one day.) The link is to the species of Amelanchier that the USDA plants page has for Wyoming. The indented names are synonyms, but you might search through the rest to see if you see anything that resembles your berry bush. These would only be those species that are native or have escaped to the wild.

Again this presupposes that the plant is actually amelanchier, which might not be the case. A photo, or even a scan of a leaf with any stem it may have would really help. Harry

 

This sounds an awful lot like the berries I ate in the Tetons yesterday (mid August), serviceberry (sauvis i think is the Latin name) on stiff stalk like huckleberry, with more tiny harder seeds inside than a blueberry, but with similar whitish interior. A roundish serrated leaf, examples I saw were shrubs growing to 4 feet high, in great profusion among semi-gladed aspen thickets.