picking black chokeberries

picking black chokeberries

hands and tongue stained purplish red

mouth puckering up

Bumper crop of black chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa) this year, the 12 foot (4 meter) high bushes bending almost to the ground with their burden of purplish-black berries hanging in clusters. I don't need a ladder to reach the highest berries, as I can easily pull the branches down to bring the fruit within reach. The berries are so ripe that a whole cluster comes off in my cupped palm, sometimes as many as 32 pomes at a time. So far I've picked 6 gallons. Half went into the freezer and half are being dried, slowly shriveling up like small raisins. The seeds are so small that they might as well be seedless grapes. When dry, they look like large black peppercorns.
          Of course, aronia berries don't taste anything like raisins or fresh grapes. Their common name, chokeberries, refers to the reaction you have when popping even one in your mouth. They are extremely astringent, like unripe persimmons, so your mouth instantly puckers up. This astringency deters pests and diseases. I have found quite a few spiders making white egg nests on some of the berries. Do the baby spiders hatch out before the berries fall off and/or shrivel up? I haven't noticed any berries being eaten by deer, though they do browse on the leaves and stems. Even our summer tanagers, who favor all sorts of red berries, have only pecked on a few berries, as if one taste as enough. 
          While I'm picking the berries I bravely pop a few into my mouth straight out of my purplish-red stained hands. Sometimes I chase the fresh berries with a teaspoon of honey or sprinkle them on yogurt or cereal. Why bother eating something so unpleasant? Because aronia berries are a super-antioxidant, extremely high in anthocyanins and flavonoids. They can, of course, be made more palatable by adding some kind of sweetener and canning, juicing, or processing into jelly or wine. But that's way too time-consuming. Air drying the berries is easy and space-saving, since one gallon of fresh berries shrinks to one quart. Furthermore, the dried berries, which look like large black peppercorns, lose their astringency.