After several years of sparse output, Texas Hill Country agarita bushes are having a banner berry season.
The fruits of the most common species of barberry found in Texas are ubiquitous in parts of the Hill Country right now. Agarita berries look like small currants. The spiky-leafed bush forms thickets and its fragrant, yellow flowers are among the first blooms to appear each season, usually in February. Red berries follow in April and continue ripening into June.
Andrea DeLong-Amaya, director of horticulture at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, explained that plants have good and bad years. She describes this year’s agarita berry crop as “gangbuster.”
“If they were hit with something last year, they’ll make up for it the following one if conditions are right,” she said.
Foraging expert Mark “Merriwether” Vorderbruggen agreed that favorable timing and weather conditions played a role in this year’s large agarita berry crop.
“The combo of drought followed by a fair amount of rain can trigger plants to produce excess fruit,” said Vorderbruggen, a chemist, author, and creator of the popular Foraging Texas website. “It’s a stress response, like, ‘I might be in ‘danger, so I better produce a lot.'”
Hill Country agarita fans have noticed the bounty of berries.
“The most I have seen in 13 years here!” Gerald T. Bohmfalk posted on the Mason County Community Facebook page. Lynn Sample reported that her agarita bushes on the north side of Fredericksburg were “loaded.”
“They’re everywhere,” said Ann Newman of San Antonio.
From the kitchen window of her family’s Vanderpool ranch house, Newman watched an oriole make multiple trips to an agarita bush to retrieve single berries to feed her clutch of four chicks. She said the contrast of the bright yellow-and-black bird holding the ruby red berries in her mouth was a striking sight and that over the course of her family’s several-day visit, the oriole “must have made a hundred trips” to the agarita bush.
Songbirds thrive on agarita berries, as do quail and small mammals, yet deer leave it alone — probably because they can’t get to the berries without getting stabbed by the thorny, five-pronged leaves. Some animals use the shrubs for protective cover; others as an opportunistic hunting blind.
Beryl Armstrong, a conservation land manager and co-owner and founder of Plateau Land & Wildlife Management, recalled a Hill Country saying repeated to him over the years.
“To harvest agarita, all you need is a broom, a sheet and a shotgun.” The broom is for beating the bush to knock the berries off, the sheet is to catch the berries, and the shotgun is to shoot the snake waiting under the thorny stems.
“Snakes are opportunistic predators and they’ll hang out wherever the prey is going to be — in blackberry brambles, fruit bushes and agarita shrubs,” said Armstrong, although he doesn’t condone shooting snakes, which serve important roles in the ecosystem.
“The flowers came out early and abundant and we got some intermittent rain,” he said. “The agarita got busy and made babies this year.”
Agarita’s multiple uses are legendary. Foragers use agarita berries in tarts, pancakes and cobblers or convert them into jelly, syrup, juice and compotes.
Even without encountering snakes, agarita’s spiny leaves make gathering its fruits a literal pain.
In addition to the classic broom-and-sheet harvesting approach, you can use an umbrella under a branch flush with berries, combing the berries off the plant from the inside of the bush out, since the prickly leaves face outward. Wear protective, elbow-length gloves.
Inevitably, twigs, agarita leaves, dirt, organic matter and numerous insects will accompany your berry harvest. Once you have your bowl of berries, pick out the detritus or use a mesh screen to shake out the unwanted material.
Armstrong agreed that the berry bounty results from good timing and weather conditions, what is known as phenology, in science. Last year, late freezes reduced the number of berries, while this year South Central Texas avoided a hard, late freeze.
The Foraging Texas website cites the many uses of agarita, including roasting and grinding its plentiful seeds for a caffeine-free coffee substitute. Other ethnobotanical sources explain that agarita leaves can be chewed to prevent nausea, its wood can be boiled to make dyes, and roots utilized to fight fungi and bacterial infections.
Vorderbruggen mentioned that agarita’s bright, orange-colored wood is filled with berberine, a bittering agent that can be made into a bitters-like syrup, perfect for cocktails. “I’ve heard of people making swizzle sticks out of agarita twigs — just remove the bark,” he said.
Unfortunately, agarita is not widely available in nurseries. If you find yourself smitten with this plant, you’ll have to check out native plant sales, shop at specialty nurseries, grow it from seed or transplant it from the wild.
According to How to Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest, growing agarita from seed takes three years to produce a five-gallon plant. Fruit will follow, but the timing of that is unpredictable, and depends largely on light, temperature and water. Well-drained soil is a must. Seeds are available online, but be sure to get Mahonia trifoliata.
