Hackberry headaches!

[AlanDB]

My wife and I went out for a nice 20 mile ride on our local paved rail trail yesterday, and encountered several stretches of the trail that were covered with small dark red/black berries. The berries are about the size of a pea, and have a large hard seed with a thin sticky fruit. I think they are from hackberry trees but I am not sure. Riding across them sounded like a "snap, crackle and pop" Rice Krispies commercial The fruit part of the berry was very sticky and would stick to the tires and throw up the seeds in a gooey sticky mess. By the time we finished the ride, our bikes and legs were covered with the mess. The broken sticky seed parts had stuck to the inside of the fenders. It was a thick coating and caused the fenders to rub on the tires, and every now and then a seed would go between the chain and the sprocket, so the bikes were making a terrible racket. I cleaned the bikes up the best I could without removing the fenders. It is interesting that we rode these same trails last summer and fall and never encountered this problem. This must be a productive year for hackberry fruit.

 

[rich c]

A typical event on my local rail trail. Could be hackberries, but I thought we were running on wild cherries, or choke cherries. Mulberries are the first hazard in the spring. Then choke cherries, followed by walnuts and hedge apples. Each seems progressively worse, but some hedge apples are larger than baseballs! Mulberry juice seems the worst for clothing stains! I consider it a minor issue considering the beautiful tide in nature. Could be worse, they could be goathead thorns!

 

[AlanDB]

I am not much of a tree expert, so I suppose they could have been choke cherries. They were quite dark in color and on the trail looked a lot like your picture. Based on online images though, I think the leaves on the tree looked more like the hackberry tree than the choke cherry. We have encountered mulberries in the spring too, and they can stain clothing, but don't make the gooey mess that these fruits did. Yeah. the black walnuts are a real hazard. When they are present on the trail, I slow down, as hitting one of them can throw you.

 

[AlanDB]

I was back out on the trail today and took a closer look at the trees. I think you are right about them being choke cherry trees or some type of wild cherry, but not hackberry. The bark on the tree wasn't right for a hackberry. The berries are in clusters and are black or dark purple, not red. Whatever they are, I will be glad when they have stopped falling on the trail and get washed off by rain.

 

[rich c]

I was back out on the trail today and took a closer look at the trees. I think you are right about them being choke cherry trees or some type of wild cherry, but not hackberry. The bark on the tree wasn't right for a hackberry. The berries are in clusters and are black or dark purple, not red. Whatever they are, I will be glad when they have stopped falling on the trail and get washed off by rain.

Thanks for the reply Alan. I’ve been a woodworker for 47 years and had a portable sawmill for a year. I thought I had the species right, but I didn’t go over and examine the tree. I ride a recumbent tadpole trike with no fenders. My grips are still sticky!