berry · The Trophy Room
Thimbleberry
The soft, seedy jewel of the PNW trail — a thimbleberry is too delicate to ever sell in a store, which is why you have to walk to one. Pick the ripe red cap off its core like a little thimble, and it dissolves into tart-sweet on your tongue. Trail candy that never makes it home.
Identifying
- large, soft, shallow-domed red berry that pulls off hollow, like a thimble
- big fuzzy maple-shaped leaves, soft as felt, no thorns on the cane
- white five-petaled flowers earlier in the season
- so soft it crushes in your fingers — that fragility is the giveaway
Facts
- unsellable and unshippable — they turn to jam in a day, so they only exist on the trail
- thornless canes, unlike most of its blackberry-raspberry cousins
- the broad soft leaves are the classic backcountry substitute for toilet paper
