SPICEBUSH BERRIES : Reviewing Foraged Berries That Pack A Punch! - Weird Fruit Explorer

[@WeirdExplorer]

Like Foraging videos? Here's a whole playlist full of them: kzbin.info/aero/PLvGFkMrO1ZxKeJnyy987ptAB7_9YkVThn

[@suicune690]

Another fact: there's species of butterfly, the Spicebush Swallowtail, that relies on this bush as its only source of food as a caterpillar.

[@imaeatit4953]

Spicebush is their preferred host, as well as Sassafras, which is in the same family (Lauraceae).

[@Erewhon2024]

It is also a minor host for Papilio glaucus (Eastern Tiger Swallowtail), especially in southern areas, and a possible host for the Palamedes Swallowtail (Papilio palamedes) which normally prefers native bay trees (Persea borbonia and palustris). Unfortunately all native laurels (except possibly the spicebush, which is often too small and twiggy to attract the ambrosia beetle), especially Persea (and non native avocados, same genus) are rapidly being wiped out in the Southeast by Laurel Wilt Disease, carried by an ambrosia beetle that apparently hitchhiked into south Georgia inside untreated pallet wood from China. All laurels can host this pest, and only Asian species seem able to survive it at present. Persea were keystone species in the ecology of the American Gulf Coastal Plain, and since there aren't any high mountains between the eastern USA and eastern Latin America (i.e. east of the Sierra Madre Oriental and Andes), I fear untold ecological damage awaits in the tropics and subtropics. Maybe a Texan or NE Mexican can tell me if desert conditions lacking any Lauraceae exist up to the coast in those areas that might block the spread? Anyway, *always heat treat any wood* and inspect/quarantine all plants crossing international borders! Spicebush and Sassafras will probably survive as species in areas too cold for the beetle. Umbellaria (California bay) is susceptible, but hopefully isolated by the mountains. For now, the Palamedes Swallowtail is surviving on seedlings, but if no bays survive to fruiting age, that won't last. I realize it is multinationals and foreign firms that are doing this, presumably not Weird Fruit Explorer subscribers, but please, please *ship responsibly*!

[@Onoma314]

Another great video ! The retired chef in me wonders why you've not been hired by a large company to source novel ingredients.....you really are at the top of the game

[@ScoriacTears]

He's probably had a few offers.

[@benny_lemon5123]

Right?! It's shocking how much variety is out there. Half the world is slept on smh lol

[@gungasc]

spicy popcorn.

[@sabosage]

"Here's a leaf!' For some reason that really tickled me.

[@realstatistician]

Thanks for trying these fruits and the leaves too. That is fascinating that the leaves taste like lemongrass, because lemongrass is grown as an annual because it has no frost tolerance but Lindera benzoin grows in usda zones 4-9, so it could be a lemongrass alternative that I wouldn’t have to replant every year. And I’m all about plants that I don’t have to replant every year lol. Thanks weird explorer!

[@luke_fabis]

I love using the dried berries as a spice. It’s like a fruity allspice. But it never occurred to me that someone might eat the fresh fruit.

[@harisongriffin]

You can make a tea from the stems and the leaf stems. It tastes pretty good

[@zaviahopethomas-woundedsou9848]

I think you confirmed I would enjoy growing this! I would love to see you review Holy Basil also called Tulsi. It is not a normal basil, not even close, it is used for tea.

[@vondabarela8994]

When I saw you getting ready to pop that whole fruit in your mouth, I was yelling at the screen for you to stop. Then, I just laughed and laughed! We’ve got lots of spicebush on our land. Very useful plant and mostly delicious if used correctly. Good video! Thanks. 👍🏼

[@abritishguy8351]

Oh cool! When he said the bark could be used as a spice, do you know whether that works? :)

[@vondabarela8994]

a british guy yes! It tastes very like cinnamon.

[@critterjon4061]

I grew up in in eastern Tennessee and remember picking these behind my house but them going by the name “Indian allspice”

[@ZakKohler]

I first tried this at the Pawpaw festival

[@WeirdExplorer]

I tried the jam there :)

[@Fredjikrang]

Nice! Another one to add to my yard! I can't remember, have you tried Tasmanian mountain pepper? I planted one this spring and they are seriously cool looking plants.

[@chadwickhurlburt6529]

This was like listening to a wine expert describing the flavor of wine. I suppose at some point, there are only so many ways to describe things. Love the channel, I enjoy watching your fruit adventures. Best regards.

[@WeirdExplorer]

Thanks! how people describe flavors for wine/coffee/cheese/etc.. is definitely something I think about when making these videos.

[@kodavulpedrius6712]

Would you consider doing reviews on other raw plant foods? Like strange and rare vegetables, flower nectar, plant saps, flowers etc. Personally I like the taste of epidendrum orchid flowers, lol, its not considered normal to eat flowers where I am from but I just do it because I am weird. Ive also eaten flower nectar and tree saps (edible ones)

[@k8eekatt]

You may really enjoy hoya Bella or hoya carnosa flowers.

[@achannel1818]

I used to eat Rose petals from my garden when I was a kid. They were slightly sweet

[@Erewhon2024]

@@achannel1818 Rose petals are good in black tea. Oddly, a mix of rose tea and blackcurrant "squash" (diluted syrup) tastes like blueberry for some reason.

[@iancrawford4977]

Holy smokes, making bitters out of this could be amazing

[@SenorEscaso]

I'd be very interested in a series where you try to use lesser-known spices and herbs. Maybe there are some nice gems here in North America.

[@NiharM77]

When you reach your 500th episode, could you possibly do some top 10 videos of the sweetest, sourest, bitter and spiciest fruits?

[@Story-Voracious66]

So cool! Even when you can't travel, you still present something fascinating! Thank you. I am SO Wikipediaing this right now!

[@amy3458]

I believe the spice berries you tried were unripe. We have dozens of Lindera benzoin on our farm. Our chickens LOVE them. However, they only eat them when they turn a dark blueish purple. If you let these dry, they can be used as an allspice substitute. 😁 LOVE your channel! Thank you so much!

[@censusgary]

Those berries look a lot like mescal beans. By the way, DO NOT EAT MESCAL BEANS. They are definitely poisonous. However, you probably won’t find the tree (also known as Texas Mountain Laurel) in New York. It grows mostly in Texas (for example, my back yard) and Mexico. And no, mescal beans don’t have anything to do with mescaline, nor with the drink mescal.

[@TKCTSTN]

Spicebush grows all over middle Tennessee. I peeled the thin layer off the large seed. (Stains your fingers) I dried some & dropped some in alcohol. I haven"t noticed a resin flavor- more like allspice. My favorite use is in cakes, especially poundcake & have used them to flavor ricotta cheese. A friend dried them & ground the entire berry, seed & all. She found it tasty- I will be trying it that way when they ripen in a few weeks as peeling that thin layer of fruit is quite labor intensive.

[@jenniferbutcher8393]

You nailed it! We have lots of spicebush around, they thrive in moist Woodlands in temperate climates. We have eaten the seeds, dried leaves and bark, and made tea from it. How fun! 😊 thanks!

[@professorbellorum]

Tincture of Benzoin is a stickifying agent used to make your skin much stickier for tape and other adhesives. Anyone who has had Steri-Strips used to close a wound instead of stiches will probably have had the tincture applied. It's kept in a lot of emergency rooms in little glass tubes inside plastic applicators that you snap to open. It's surprisingly hard to find tincture of benzoin on the open market -- I went on a long quest to find some a while back as a stickifying agent to tape up wounds on my fingers for rock climbing. I was surprised to see it marketed mostly as an incense or perfume -- you might say I was incensed by the lack of availability for the more practical purpose. I finally realized that people who keep horses and livestock know what's what and tend to keep some around to facilitate taping injured animals' legs.

[@michaelbayerl1683]

These grow like weeds in our woods. Birds love them. Deer, not so much.

[@bobbob3470]

NICE obscura shirt .. lol i have spent the entire day binging your channel, and as a rare fruit veteran and huge HUGE huge huge music fan it's been cool 8-)

[@natejansen892]

Awesome! I just recently discovered spicebush growing on my property and have been learning about it. Over here in west Michigan it flowers mid march through april.

[@sonofammonite1714]

Haha, I've been waiting for this vid man!

[@jakeisjake112]

It is one of my favorite trees! I have a few growing in my backyard. A truly beautiful native. A very slow grower so please dont go crazy if you wanna harvest from them.

[@jakeisjake112]

Definitely gonna try the berries in pie.

[@geenesmern6830]

Three spice flavors from one plant! Cool!

[@odah7785]

I’ve hade the berries before and the definitely tastes like a bell pepper to me. I’ve also had ice cream made by infusing the cream with spicebush twigs, it tasted like key lime pie and I loved it!

[@PowerTom286]

Definitely an interesting plant, Jared

[@brianmccarrier1605]

I'm growing some of those! They're still just seedlings, but this year they'll be large enough that I think I'll try making a tea out of the leaves.

[@TNUni167]

There's a tree where I live in Manhattan, my local park. The twigs smells like allspice. Could you please make a video about how and where you shop for fruits in NYC?

[@buddha4242]

They like woody wet areas, I have a bunch on my property. I actually collected one for a bonsai tree, I'm excited for berries on it

[@brt5273]

Great video as usual. I'm definitely trying to obtain plants I can grow here, that provide flavors and other qualities to fill a niche, in the event that some of our familiar but harder to source spices become unobtainable or prohibitively expensive. Also, love the Obscura shirt. I hated to hear they closed their Manhattan shop. I understand that Mike is running a traveling Oddities Market, and Ryan is running an Oddities Flea Market in Brooklyn. Hope I get the chance to run into them again some day.

[@FishPlinko]

I might have to get some of the leaves and twigs since they grow where I live!

[@themagnanimous1246]

These are all over where I live in Central Ohio. You can make lots of yummy things with the berries, like icecream.

[@samrichardson8388]

Great content! Increased production value in the text wipes and sound effects!

[@peasant502]

Love the video man! Keep up the interesting content. Congrats on 100k! Out skateboarding and missed the stream, but big props to you!

[@WeirdExplorer]

Appreciate it!

[@GolosinasArgentinas]

Nice!

[@Komodo1312]

Congrats on the 100K subscribers!

[@zombmomandrea6014]

Spicebush goes hand in hand with pawpaw even when the grow they like to be near eachother😊

[@zombmomandrea6014]

Also during the Civil War soldiers would make a tea to warm themselves up it has properties that help warm the body up😊

[@benny_lemon5123]

My universal descriptor for this channel is "Wow, I've never heard of that before!". So, in response to this video- that statement.

[@funcamp_ltd.]

Tried these when I found them while going camping in North PA! Didn't make a tea but the berry itself was very very bitter haha!

[@wutflex]

Yo this type of video is the best

[@TheThrashCW]

The Spice... He knows about the Spice. The Spice, melange...

[@scottsellers9039]

I read through the comments and didn't see this listed. Mash the green or red berries between your palms and rub the juice on your skin and clothing. It's one of the best natural insect repellents I've tried. If you're or in the woods and the mosquitos are biting, find a spice bush!

[@sonofammonite1714]

I don't usually eat them when they're that rip, I like them a bit when they're on the greener side

[@scottm2553]

The most resony berry I've had was Juniper berry.

[@luke_fabis]

Scott M Those are actually a fleshy kind of cone. They’re more like pine cones than like berries.

[@scottm2553]

@@luke_fabis Idk, fresh juniper berries seem more like a berry than a cone to me.

[@MaxOakland]

Amazingly, they are cones. They’re cones that evolved to look like berries to attract birds Crazy, right?

[@xvlxlwx]

Congratulations on 100k subs! I just noticed :D

[@Kikilang60]

Thanks Jared. I could actually grow this. Jared, you need a house to grow some of these things. Oh, a house with a yard, I mean.

[@carrolllee6875]

You should mention when you did browsing I cant imagine you found them recently.

[@hudson.5940]

sweet!

[@Luhsteesay]

Random thought: have you ever eaten American Beautyberry? The leaves smell (imo) sorta like Vick's vapor rub if you rub the leaves, and the berries taste sorta like licorice? Don't actually know if they're toxic or not, but ɪ used to eat them as a kid and ɪ'm not dead so maybe safe?

[@WeirdExplorer]

I've seen them, but never in a place where I was able to pick them. I've heard they're edible, but I'm not 100% certain.

[@Erewhon2024]

Green Deane (eattheweeds) has a good article on them. The berries are edible but rather insipid unless made into preserves. The leaves supposedly are our best mosquito repellent.

[@woodspirit98]

Only the female plants have berries if you have a male plant nearby. The Cherokee would make a morning tea of the thin braches.

[@ggg08642]

Do these grow in NY? I swear these used to grow in my backyard as a kid in long island.

[@SenorEscaso]

Yes

[@stevenmurray3238]

Do you think this would be worth planting? Generally I would put something like this into blueberry baskets, but it looks like these are smaller than blueberries and it would take a lot of plants to fill 1 case of berries.i am not currently growing it, but interested

[@WeirdExplorer]

Depends. The berries on their own might be interesting to chefs, but since they are more of an ingredient than a fruit you'd eat out of hand. So probably not enough of a draw for those alone. But with the bonus of being able to sell the leaves/twigs for tea and possibly a spice from the bark, it may be worth it.

[@Erewhon2024]

If you like butterflies, YES. But this isn't as productive as blueberries (you need at least one male plant and one or more females--usually sold unsexed, so plant a bunch; and the females produce fewer and smaller berries than blueberries do), so if you have only a little land, it may be more productive to use that for other crops. The leaf/twig tea or bark can come from either sex, though.

[@brendawitting2635]

Their grow wild in KY and they dry the berries and sf the whole to take the wild taste out of game.meat along with broke twigs They call the tree "spice wood,'

[@electradon]

I see this all over the place here in Indiana

[@catmeowmeow1662]

Interesting

[@lorenzopanza2082]

hey i live in Connecticut, do you know any forgeable fruit in our region of the country, or know any websites/guides about the wild fruit of our region? i live on the shoreline so sandy soil. thanks!!

[@WeirdExplorer]

you can try this site: fallingfruit.org/

[@lorenzopanza2082]

Weird Explorer THANK YOU!!

[@MrChristianDT]

I'm glad you didn't swallow that. So far as I'm aware, this plant contains the raw ingredients for cyanide & the acid in your stomach will complete the chemical reaction & manufacture it while it's still in your digestive system. I'm a bit surprised you were alright with the berries. I can never find clear answers as to whether they are completely safe or not, so I just assumed they weren't & advised the similar usage to the leaves to people.

[@marialiyubman]

Spice bush is an album by the spice girls.

[@alvinoreo2517]

snozberries!!

[@GregoryMom]

They look like Red Hots!

[@kaplalex8557]

Lol I live right by Forest Park and I'm currently drinking foraged dandelion root coffee (after getting inspired by your other video kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJaXlpl-mqiteNk) I think I know what I'm doing tomorrow! Thanks for finding practical and weird vegetables :)

[@JTMusicbox]

You lost me on this one with “tastes like you are eating perfume,” but I was back onboard when you said “three spices on hand!”

[@Erewhon2024]

In Florida there is a low growing evergreen stoloniferous grouncover (that looks like an expanse of myrtle oak seedlings except in bloom or fruit, or if you look closely and see the glands on its leaves) called "gopher apple," whose fruit smells like a mix of perfume with a hint of vodka. I didn't know it was edible at the time I picked one, and wildlife like (gopher & box) turtles pick them so clean that I haven't gotten another chance. Lindera berries were supposedly used as a substitute for allspice, but remind me mostly of black pepper.

[@HoosierDaddyOfficial]

“The Spice Bush”. What a great name for a strip club.

[@WeirdExplorer]

I'm sure its out there somewhere...

[@jamesjoros1853]

I always liked to hold the twigs in my mouth and let the bark soften; it tastes good

[@Sowbriety]

Have you tried Yucca fruit?

[@Sarit17819]

I miss it

[@panwall1327]

Make Spiceberry seed coffee

[@dataquester]

SB sounds like an exotic dancers name....

[@salihkara2211]

I tought that was a Cornelian cherry. We have a lot of it here. Your discription sounds like one.

[@whowereweagain]

Hey spice bush doesn't rippen until late summer. You are either a time traveler or you have a stash of videos

[@luiysia]

id guess he prefilms a lot of these lol

[@MintyFarts]

Is Carolina Spice Bush similar?

[@Erewhon2024]

That is usually Calycanthus floridus. It has capsules, not berries, and I believe it is toxic, just smells nice.

[@stanervin6108]

Magnolia tree cones are covered with similar looking red berries. Unsure if edible.

[@Erewhon2024]

Those are seeds or maybe arils around seeds. The fruit is the thing that looks like a cone. I have never heard of people eating them. Crows like them, then experience laxative effects over cars parked near Magnolias (at least M. grandiflora). I've heard of Brits (but not Amerindians!?) pickling and eating M. grandiflora petals, and rural Southerners using Magnolia virginiana leaves as a bay substitute, but that is it.

[@stanervin6108]

@@Erewhon2024 Thx for the info. Tree rats (squirrels) love them, too. The blossoms smell heavenly!

[@rileyyoung4762]

I've been looking to grow spicebush for a long time but I've been unable to find seeds or plants anywhere, do you think it would be possible for you to send me some seeds?

[@richardbidinger2577]

I wonder if the seeds would be safe to grind up and use in cooking, or if they're like apple seeds and have something toxic in them. Just looked this up, and discovered that this shrub has male and female plants, and only the berries from the female plant are edible. You might want to update this video so people know.

[@Erewhon2024]

Only female plants produce berries. That's why they are female. Males produce pollen.

[@REDonFIRE]

You can eat the seeds and why not chew up the entire leaf?

[@chirpatabug6282]

Spicy eyes

[@TheDefconsd1]

Now tried the berry and the leaf you must go to the park were you berry and leaf and film your self taking a bite out of the tree.😐🤣

[@TylerMWeather9102]

Yo i love making spicebush tea with the ones in my woods. Chewing on the sticks is also nice when ur hiking. The berries are really potent.

[@TylerMWeather9102]

I use the twigs for tea

[@dawn125]

Im sorry did you say you where at a... park?

[@WeirdExplorer]

filmed months ago :)

[@dawn125]

@@WeirdExplorer Lol I figured.

[@mandab.3180]

spizy berry 😖 nay.

[@brandon9172]

Algorithm8c coiment

[@protocetid]

insert dirty joke about gingers here

[@Real_Iceout]

Yo I sometimes ate these when I was a kid. Not great to be honest 👎🏼

[@xihangyang]

like a porno name

[@KorvekKorborjordordon]

Instructions unclear, swallowed the seed and now have a Spicebush currently growing inside my stomach