Fall is approaching Fast!

These plants are the first indication that fall is coming! I knew the natives used the berries for dye, but never knew they were edible. Think I will pass on the taste test!

Summary courtesy of "Prairie Wildflowers"

Strawberry Blite: Red berry flowers

The Strawberry Blite flowers form in clusters where each leaf meets the stalk. They begin minuscule and green, with five sepals and no petals. As the sepals mature, the clusters turn red and enlarge to resemble berries.

(Raspberries, I'd say, but the experts — includingVance/Jowsey, source of that info above — see them instead as strawberries.)

These plants are members of the very large Goosefoot family. (The weed — or pseudocereal — Lambsquarters is related, though far from as brightly coloured.)

The berry-like clusters of Strawberry Blite flowers are, in fact, edible, though very bland, according to the webpage for the Royal Saskatchewan Museum's Native Plant Garden.

Habitat for Strawberry Blite: Waste places, garden edges and moist roadsides across the continent,