It's late August. As always I took time to remember my favorite part of the end of summer. It seemed almost as though kids that grew up in Rural Alaska got an exempt card from nature from feeling the end of summer blues. Waiting for the salmonberries to become ripe and ready for the picking was the highlight of the year. At least for me. These berries have a soft and gentle sweetness that you just can't adequately describe with words, with just a little tart bite at the end, similar to a raspberry.
So I decided to google these berries. Search after search I kept finding information on something similar to this berry, but it just wasn't the same. When I looked up salmonberries I kept finding picture after picture of a berry that was similar in color to what I knew as a salmonberry, but it was a high bush berry.

This ^ is what my searches kept coming up with. I kept thinking that can't be right. Thats not what I call a salmonberry. So I did a little searching. This high bush berry is actually a salmon berry. The berry I knew grows only a few inches off the ground. 

This one right here ^, the one I grew up calling a salmonberry is known to the rest of the world as a cloudberry. How strange is that? I had also always just assumed that since no one I ever came in contact with had ever heard of this berry that it must also be only native to Alaska and Canada. I was wrong about that too. Rubus Chamaemour grows in several cold places all over the world. In Alaska and Canada (which I already knew) some places in Maine, Minnesota and a few other northern states on the east coast, Russia, Norway, Finland, Northern most parts of Asia and even occasionally in the northern parts of England. It literally grows all over the world, at least the northern regions of the world. 

It is highly sought after and is considered a delicacy in every part of the world it grows in. I wonder if the people that covet this berry know how many places it actually grows in. I am guessing, like me, they probably don't and just assume it is native to their area. The cloudberry also goes by these common names, bakeapple (in Atlantic Canada), Knotberry and Knoutberry (in England) Averin and Evron (in Scotland).

Doing all this research on my favorite berry has made me want them even more. Which makes me glad that I will be in Maine in a few short weeks. I hope I can find a place that has them, or at the very least has a jam or some other preserve made from them. Dear Google, thank you. I got schooled.

~Notti by Nature