Dewberries are the unofficial plant mascot of Cameron, Texas. They are truly abundant here, judging from all the photos I’m seeing. Cameron even used to have a Dewberry Festival, which featured all sorts of delicious things made with these perky fruits. I miss it.
Here’s what our friends at Wikipedia have to say:
The dewberries are a group of species in the genus Rubus, section Rubus, closely related to the blackberries. They are small trailing (rather than upright or high-arching) brambles with aggregate fruits, reminiscent of the raspberry, but are usually purple to black instead of red. Unlike many other Rubus species, dewberries are dioecious, having separate male and female plants.
That male and female plant part explains why I keep seeing bushes with no fruit! Aha!
We are lucky to have lots of dewberries here at the Hermits’ Rest, though I’d never really done much with them before, other than snack on them. That’s because I never went out looking for them when they were completely ripe. This year, after all that foraging talk, I vowed to do better.
Dewberry Cooking Time
Last weekend was great for being outdoors, so I picked three cups of them, and used two to make a cobbler. The spouse reported it was “the best cobbler I ever ate,” or something to that effect, so that was a success! Want to try it? Here’s the recipe I used. (This post has another nice recipe link.)
I picked some more today, and we ate most of them for breakfast. They are not as sweet as wild blackberries or raspberries, but they are pretty darned good, in the way that a sour cherry is good. Sweet and sour go well together.
There are lots more ripe this week than last week, so it will be easier to find a good amount of them (though I wish I had a helper!). Maybe I won’t have to go to the place where I think I disturbed a snake or our “friend” the skunk (I didn’t linger to check).
The plan is to cook a venison roast and make a dewberry sauce to go with it. My neighbor, Ralph, gave me a recipe from his favorite author of meat recipes, so I just have to find it again. All food right from our area!
Get Out of Here, Really?
OK, this cracked me up. As I continued to read the Wikipedia article, I came across this gem of information:
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the town of Cameron, North Carolina was known as the “dewberry capital of the world” for large scale cultivation of this berry which was shipped out for wide spread consumption.
Maybe dewberries are the plant of all towns named Cameron? How weird!
The Hermits' Rest 
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