Sarvice Berries

Apparently this is a sarvice berry, or more properly, berries. They are everywhere. I finally looked it up. Or as one says now, I googled it. Then I wikipediaed it. My pal Rivers didn't believe Wikipedia could be a reliable authority. Like a lot of guys his age he's afraid of anarchy.
If you have been following this rant/blog you will recall that I made me some pemmican for my travois trip on the Greyhound, and that I said I used golden raisins in the place of these things, Sarvice, or Service, berries, which is what the pioneers always were said to use as  the sweet starch filler in pemmican. Smoked dried buffalo meat, dried sarvice berries, and congealed fat or suet. Yummy. So much for orthodoxy.
And it turns out that is not just an okie mispronunciation of the word service. Sarvice is listed as one alternative name along with Saskatoon. All this variation stems from the fact that these things are all over the place, North America, Europe, in more than twenty different species. The taste is described as ranging from delectable to insipid,  Blueberries to Crabapples are comparisons I read about. Many of the varieties are cultivated by landscapers for their abundant foliage, compact shape and the contrasting color of the blossoms in the spring and then the clusters of berries in the fall.
I took this photo in early November just last week with my phone across the street from my apartment in NW Portland. I tried one of the berries. They had it right, it was, in fact, insipid