Fruits of blooms are beginning to mature, and some are soon ready to fuel animals, including us, craving of sweet, sour, nutty and tart tastes.

“My grandmother used to make the best jelly to spread atop home-made biscuits. She’d start at 4 a.m. with the dough to make hot biscuits, butter them, and finish them off with blackcap, red raspberry, and blackberry jelly for a summer morning treat,” according to Doug Williams, at D W Sports Shop in Portage.

Several surprises pop up when outdoors enthusiasts banter about wild berries. Many forgo the opportunity for free fruit and products that come after.

This summer could change some with record prices and some strawberry patch failures attributed to insects.

The berry canes grow like weeds along roadsides, bike paths, in state parks and forests, and on private lands.

Many folks are not sure if the berry in question is a black raspberry or blackberry. Part of the confusion comes from local names, including blackcaps (synonym for black raspberry). Blackcaps begin to mature a week before Independence Day, with the season ending in a couple weeks and about the time blackberries are starting to ripen.

Wild red raspberries are less common blackcaps. Both are common garden-grown fruits, with red raspberries taking the planting lead.

Bramble is a common name for these cane fruit plants, which are usually biennials and flower on second year canes.

Mulberries are beginning to ripen now on small, bushy trees. These berries can be used in ways common to raspberries and blackberries.

“Some hunting dogs love mulberries and when I’d exercise my trailing dogs around a hay field, many wanted to stop under mulberry trees and so I’d oblige and pick the lower, ripe berries to feed them,” said Wayne Smith, of Lafayette County.

Wayne learned berry picking while growing up on a farm near Argyle. He got back in the wild berry picking when some church women begin making and selling fruit pies. That’s when he learned to use both hands to pick by looping bailer twine around his neck and tying it to a small bucket’s handle.

Aside from a few mosquitoes, ticks, raccoons and much less common black bears and wild turkeys, Williams has experienced the buzzing of what he was sure were some pollinating bees. To find out, it was nothing but a startled timber rattlesnake, which is rare these days.

Most of these common wild berries are field-edible, but not recommended if insect repellents are used by the picker at the same time.

These days several plants of note include poison ivy, now in bloom. This plant’s berries ripen white, and of course are not edible.

The hitchhiking stickseed plant is single-stemmed, up to four feet tall, and a clothing-clinging nightmare in September and beyond. Walk trails and forest-field edges, pull and simply toss aside individual plants before they bloom. Do this to avoid necessary time picking hundreds of seeds from autumn hiking and hunting clothing.

Mayapples, common to most deciduous forests, are now setting fruits, produced singly, green, and then turning yellow, golf ball-sized and lemon-shaped. While this fruit may be used later this summer, it is more likely admired after having seen these “umbrella” plants since April.

Other fruits, including acorns, walnuts, hazelnuts, wild apples, grapes, native bittersweet, plums, hickory nuts, and a few butternuts are beginning what will take months or even two years to mature.

Walnuts and hickory nuts are already easily seen. White oak acorns, including swamp white, white, and bur oaks, are still tiny. The red oak group, red, black, pin, and others, grow two summers before falling. Still, those that will fall this autumn are there as are those that won’t mature until 2023.

Observations today will forecast fall activities and where to enjoy them and find the wildlife who eat them.

Most of the fruiting bodies of summer and fall mushrooms are underground, giving no hint of what to expect from puffballs, sulphur fungi, hen-of-the woods and others. Never try to pick them “green” because they are difficult enough to identify when fully developed.

Wait and use every characteristic you can.

Fishing remains slow in many areas, with bluegills and bass being exceptions, particularly on the Madison Chain of lakes, according to fishing guide Wally Banfi, at Wilderness Fish and Game in Sauk City.

“Avoid the heat of the day; fish early or late in the day; and try fishing bluegills with a bobber and ice jig tipped with a waxy, red worm, or plastic,” Banfi said.

Don Martin, Monroe; Brent Drake, Boscobel; and Williams all caution those who plan to recreate this fall to buy early, but not to hoard.

Williams has seen indications of prices increasing even more, too.

His advice is, “if you see it, and need it, buy it now but only what you need so there’s some left for others.”

Drake and Martin agree.

“Right now it’s been the warm weather that has kept anglers from going out or even purchasing bait to be ready,” Martin said.

— Jerry Davis is an Argyle native and a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.