The next morning, seven of us went out to a block together. At the crew's tailgate safety meeting that morning, Nick had said that we were going to a very challenging block. It turned out to be two giant patches of salmonberry, over our heads, that needed to be fill planted. Luckily, the forester had herbicided the block, so although we'd have to work through a fairly thick tangle of brush, at least all the leaves were gone, so we could see where we were going.
It didn't look that bad, and Nina and I set out together on the low side of the road. After the first four trees, I realized that it was going to be a tough day. I don't usually bother to ask the tree prices, but I made an exception: "Hey Nina, did you ask what the price was on this block?" She said, "Eighty cents." I started to laugh. That was the last time that I laughed that day.
The moral of the story is, "When you think you want higher tree prices, sometimes you are wrong."
Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point is that this purpose of this post is to teach you what salmonberry looks like. Well, maybe not so much the plants, but at least the berries. Salmonberry berries are often a very colourful orange-yellow colour, which I've never seen in other berries.
Salmonberry berries can also turn red after a while:
Occasionally, they can get to be quite large:
And most importantly, they're tasty!
So now you know what a salmonberry berry looks like. Aside from the fact that the plants can grow to be taller than tree planters, and are extremely thorny, and you need a machete to force your way through them, they're a pretty cool plant. The salmonberry is fairly common in coastal areas throughout British Columbia.
Here's a link to the Wiki, if you want to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_spectabilis
If you'd like to learn more about the Canadian Tree Planting industry, visit:
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