The more old fashioned bayou cooks make something called “Blackberry Dumplings” with their wild gathering. Cobbler is just one way bayou cooks use them. No matter what the name, these vine-dwelling sumptuous gifts of Nature abound on the bayou, and can be put to use in any kitchen-bayou or urban. And chances are, if you come across these beauties in the spring, they are indeed genuine dewberries, as blackberries ripen in late spring or early summer. Dewberries are often more tart than blackberries, and they are a little bit tougher, too. The last way to determine if those multi-colored gems on stems are dewberries is in the taste. Blackberries, on the other hand, are often much larger with many more drupelets. The photo above displays a dewberry about as big as you will find. Drupelets are the little tiny berries, multiples of which make up one edible “berry”. Another obvious difference is in the number and size of the of the drupelets. One difference, readily observed, is that dewberries ripen to a deep, dark purple color, while blackberries almost appear to be black when ripe. Well, maybe it takes a botanist to understand that one, but looking at the difference will help us sort it out.
According to one botanical site, a dewberry can be called a wild blackberry, but a true blackberry cannot be called a dewberry. Of course, there are hundreds of types of blackberries, and the wild dewberry is considered one type. An easy way to determine that these are wild dewberries is the fact that the vines run along the ground and do not stand upright like the more cultivated blackberry. This particular patch are growing wild, spreading out over an old home site. The debate continues as to whether these are really blackberries or dewberries. Since we didn’t have much of a winter here, it didn’t surprise me when I recently found enough dewberries ready to pick for a lip smacking dish of dewberry cobbler. Like along fences where dewberries are ripening earlier than they have in several years. If piles of bright orange boiled crawfish aren’t indication enough of the arrival of spring down the bayou, then just open up your eyes and take a look around.
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