See also Foraging in the city, part I: Watercress

Salal, as I suggested yesterday, is a great berry for urban foraging, and also easy to find when foraging in the woods away from the city.  Salal, or Gaultheria shallon, typically grows in low-lying areas as a forest understory, but can also grow well in disturbed soil with partial shade.  I’ve seen it at the edge of lawns, and in wooded spots around Seattle.  I used to pick it from the edge of a wooded plot while waiting for the bus outside the old Maple Leaf offices of Camp Fire USA, where I once worked.  In some spots in Seattle, it’s been planted intentionally; salal is kind of the poster child for native plant species.  It thrives, it’s pretty... what more can you want?

Well, berries for starters.  And it has those too.  Yes, those slightly puffy, slightly hairy berries appearing in a row really are edible!  They’re best when they’re dark blue and large.  Pick them carefully, because the skin likes to slide off the delicious fruit.  Sometimes you’re better off just picking the whole stalk of berries, which comes off the plant easily.

Salal berries are pleasant enough raw, but they’re best cooked.  The unusual texture is transformed, and the berries release a dark purple-blue color similar to the juice of their cousin, the blueberry.  Use salal in pies, tarts, jams, pancakes, or as an excellent syrup.  The cooked flavor is also similar to blueberry.

Traditionally-living Native populations in this area ate salal abundantly, enjoying the sweet berries fresh, dipped into fish oil, dried as cakes, and mixed with other berries or with salmon roe.  Medicinally, it has been regarded as an appetite suppressant, anti-inflammatory, and itch suppressant.  Salal is a relative of North American wintergreen, whose fermented leaves produce a wintergreen tea.

Salal is ripe right now and should have berries through early fall. 

Sources:

Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon: Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Revised, Vancouver: Lone Pine Publishing, 1994.

http://www.narratinglandscapes.net/wiki/index.php/Uses_of_Salal_Berry