One of the real pleasures of living in the temperate zone is experiencing the different seasons. Every autumn the trees and hedgerows in the Devon countryside are bursting with nuts, berries, fruits and seeds. This harvest of food, free for the taking, is all around us and several delicious foods can be made from autumnal fruits, such as blackberry and apple crumble (or pie), sloe gin, elderberry cordial (or wine), bilberry pie and crab apple jelly. Keats describes it as the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and all this abundant food is also essential for wild creatures.
Acorns are an important food source for woodpigeons and jays; in September and October jays bury large numbers of acorns in the ground as a winter ‘larder’. Sometimes gall wasps lay their eggs inside young acorns, which then turn into various galls – oak apples and knopper galls are two common types. Sweet chestnuts were introduced by the Romans, as were walnuts. Squirrels, badgers, foxes, dormice and many other small mammals are very fond of autumn fruit and nuts, as are migratory birds fattening up for the winter. Hazelnuts (also called cobnuts or filberts) are much loved by squirrels, as well as by humans! Beech nuts (also known as beech-mast) are an important winter food source for finches and great tits. In a good beech-mast year, flocks of several hundred chaffinches and bramblings, winter visitors from the continent, may be seen feeding on the nuts. In former times some woodland owners held the right of ‘pannage’ which allowed their pigs to forage in woodland for acorns and beech-mast.
Conkers - the huge starchy seeds of horse chestnut trees - were used in both world wars to manufacture glucose and saponin (for making soap). During World War I they were also put to a different use. When fermented by a bacterium (Clostridium acetobutylicum) the starch was converted into acetone, which was used to make explosives, including nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose. Even schoolchildren were put to work collecting conkers; in 1917, 3000 tons of conkers were collected. During World War II, with rationing at its height and fresh fruit and vegetables in short supply, the search was on to find a reliable home-grown source of vitamin C. After extensive testing, hedgerows came to the rescue in the form of rosehips, which easily outperformed blackcurrants. Rosehips have about 1,000 times more vitamin C than oranges and lemons. Kew scientists found that hips from more northern species contained more vitamin C than those from the south. The best time to collect rosehips is in August when the fruit first turns red, so children were mobilised into action. In 1943, 500 tons of rosehips were collected, enough to make 2.5 million bottles of rosehip syrup, saving the importation of 25 million oranges.
Berries are everywhere: blackberries, rowan berries, haws, sloes, elderberries, As well as berries of honeysuckle, dogwood, holly, spindle (cerise-pink capsules with orange berries), cotoneaster, and guelder rose; some are poisonous, so be very careful! Bilberries, found commonly on Dartmoor, make delicious pies and are also fed on by birds. Hawthorn berries (haws) are a favourite food for ring ouzels on migration in South Devon. The abundance of wild food in autumn steadily declines throughout the winter and as a result more birds, especially finches, visit gardens in late winter and early spring when wild food has run out or is very scarce.
If you plan on going out to look for fruit or nuts be really sure of your identification before eating anything. It is best to check a field guide (or ask Dr Google) and never eat anything from the wild unless you are absolutely sure you have identified it correctly.
Anthony John