All plants /Tree /Sugar Hackberry
Sugar Hackberry
Celtis laevigata, hemp family. Abundant in East and Central and West Texas.
At a glance
- What
- Pea-sized orange-red berries, eaten whole
- How
- Crunch whole (thin sweet skin over a crunchy nut) or blend into bars
- When
- September into winter, hanging on the twig
- Where
- Every fence line and vacant lot in Texas
- Value
- Sugar, fat, and protein in one package, a true trail food
Caution: The berry is mostly seed; eat it like a crunchy snack, not a mouthful of soft fruit, or blend and strain. Warty gray bark is the tree's fingerprint.
Identification
The tree everyone has and nobody planted: gray bark studded with corky warts, sandpaper leaves, and winter twigs beaded with orange berries.
On the trail
Hackberries are candy that crunches. Native Texans pounded them whole into cakes, sugar, fat, and protein in one wild bar.
Photo: Sam Fraser-Smith from Brisbane, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Forages well with
Forage safely. Never eat a wild plant on this site's word alone. Confirm identity with several sources, learn the look-alikes, and when in doubt, leave it in the ground.