A rose by many other names
When you see the chuckley pear in a not-ripe stage, you may well puzzle over what it is. At that point in time, it’s a large berry, light red in colour. It’s not as familiar as the blueberry or as readily identifiable. You hesitate to pick and eat it because it just may be poisonous.
Therefore, when I went strolling away from the parking lot at the Johnson GEO Centre on Signal Hill a few weekends ago, I thought at first that all of these high bushes with decorative berries had been planted as part of the centre’s landscaping. So I would definitely not pick and sample. Nearby there is a collection of beautiful rocks, a reconstruction of a stone chimney with cooking area, and a sampling of an old cemetery.
Further along, I noticed many of the berries were purple. It was then that I recognized the chuckley pear. There were dozens of the bushes stretching away to where landscaping surely would not have been imposed. These bushes average five feet high and, fruit aside, they are an attractive plant.
Once back at home and scanning my bookshelf for information on edible plants (I use Google only to confirm things I already know!) I found Glen Ryan’s “Native Trees and Shrubs of Newfoundland and Labrador” and Peter Scott’s “Edible Plants of Newfoundland and Labrador”. The “edible” part struck a responsive note. This latter book is a field guide so it has a durable softish cover and large, bright photos. Even hikers with uncertain vision may be assured of sustenance should they have the good fortune to be lost in the Newfoundland wilderness at nature’s harvest time.
First of all, the chuckley pear has the kind of family – well, OK, “tree” – that suggests wanton sexual experimentation. There are siblings, cousins, suspicious look-alikes and more. And they all blame it on Rose. And, in fact, the unripe chuckley pear does look like Rose’s hips.
One of the many names for this berry (and the plant, too, I guess) is Saskatoon. But, if I have correctly absorbed all the knowledge at my fingertips on this plant, they do not grow any farther west in Canada than Ontario. Sort of like learning that no Labrador Tea grows in Labrador. That one is a rhododendron, by the way.
In my page-flipping, I started back more than 80 years ago with A.M. Ayre’s “Wild Flowers of Newfoundland – Mainly Orchis, Willow, Buttercup, Mustard, Rose.” There it is, that last-mentioned! And on Page 189 we have a fairly true depiction of “Chuckly Pear Amelanchier Bartramiana” described as a shrub, three to nine feet with thin, oval leaves, two or three white flowers and purple fruit. This amateur botanist’s pursuit ultimately resulted in a herbarium of her work named in her honour at Memorial University.
Ryan’s book traces its lineage back to 1978 and my copy is from the sixth printing. The drawings of the chuckley pear on page 68 are exquisite. On the page opposite we see that the leaves of our chuckley pear require eight or nine adjectives for adequate description. But the two words that caught my eye were “coarsely toothed.” Had I read that before encountering them on Signal Hill I might have hesitated to drive my hand incautiously into the branches to pluck a few ripe berries.
In particular, I read with interest this note of Ryan’s, “the chuckley-pears are difficult to identify, the species having minor individual differences and sometimes hybridizing. There seems to be no consensus as to the actual number of species present in eastern North America.”
Like any well-reproduced family, I also read here that the bushes are found in a variety of habitats including clearings, borders of woods, thickets, swamps, and along shores and stream banks. Rather like the Hatfields and the Mccoys.
Of course we know that the chuckley pear is an edible fruit. Peter Scott’s book reports, “the fruit are juicy and sweet with prominent seeds that soften when cooked. They can be stewed or made into pies, muffins or other baked goods.” Scott also informs us that there are 15 species in North America and all have edible fruit.
A little aside
Agnes Ayre (mentioned above) in her 1935 book credits “the misses Cooper of Clarenville” among others, for sending her plant specimens. What wonderfully involved people were those Cooper sisters! Leslie Harris, a former president of Memorial University, boarded with them when, later in life, they lived on Parade Street, St. John’s. This was in the late 1940s when Harris was a student at Memorial University College. His foreword tells us much about the Coopers; in part he described their sitting room — “the focal point of the house, neat and cosy, but nonetheless well-lived-in, invited relaxation, good conversation, and a palpable sense of tranquility. Meals were simple and delicious and served with just a touch of elegance; indeed, there was about the taking of food an element of the sacramental. Conversation ranged widely — books and music, poetry and painting, politics and religion, local events and international affairs, natural history and gardening.”
— From “The Deserted Island, Newfoundland Verse & Paintings,” by Georgiana Cooper, 1979.