Sloes or Bullace

[Honeythorn Gump]

Hi,

New to the site but have been reading many posts over the past few months.

I found some berries today and need help identifying them. From some of the posts I have read on this site, I am confident they are either sloes of bullaces.

Not the best pics but I hope they are good enough for someone to ID them.

Pics are here, not sure how to upload direct to thread.

On some of the bushes/trees, the thorns were very evident on the main and older branches but not so many or none at all on the newer branches.

http://s1182.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... i/library/

[GeorgeSalt]

They look very much like sloes, although the photos are rather small. I'm pretty certain they are sloes.





Get 'em in some gin!

Welcome to the site..

[Honeythorn Gump]

Good to know and thanks for helping. I waas think they were sloes but after reading about bullaces (never heard of them before).

Were the pictures not bigger when you clicked the link ? They are bigger when I click it.

Anyway, would bullaces have any thorns at all ? All the bushes had thorns but some had more than others. On a couple of bushes, the berries seemed to be clumped running down the stem with some gnarley big spines on the main stem but none on the newer stems. On other bushes, the berries were more spread out over the bush and had thorns on newer stems. Just wondered if I had a mix of bullaces and sloes.

Planning on making wine rather than sloe gin but like to know what I have before I make it. If bullaces do not have any thorns at all then they are all sloes.

[GeorgeSalt]

The photos I displayed are the largest size I could see.. as the owner you'll have access to the larger sizes and you should have the code for sharing them displayed to copy and paste - it will look like (img)something/something.jpg(/img) but will use square brackets instead of curved.

If it looks like a sloe I treat it like a sloe, but I suspect I may have harvested the odd bullace in the past without noticing (I remember one hedge near a former house always had larger fruit). From the sources I can see, the bullace has a larger leaf and only very occasionally a thorn. I'm increasingly confident you have sloes. I'm also not sure if it really makes a difference as they can both be used in the same ways.