Collecting public fruit

Now that the growing season is really getting underway, you may have noticed trees and bushes bearing delicious fruit in your neighborhood. Can you pick them? It's so tempting!

There are several websites which track so-called "public fruit." Sites like fallingfruit.org are crowdsourced resources for locations and descriptions of edible plants which are growing on public land. This can include volunteer cherry trees in empty lots, apple trees located in parks, and mulberry trees planted on roadside parking strips.

Eating public fruit has two challenges: identifying the species, and making sure it's legal to take some. There are many trees and bushes that bear edible fruit you may not know about, like linden, rowan, and mulberries. These websites can help you find those, but as with any wild food, you should always look up the identification and be 100% sure you have the right plant before you start snacking.

The second issue is the legality. In many cities, any fruit which hangs over onto a public area is fair game. This can include an apple tree that hangs over a public sidewalk, blueberry bushes growing out into a public parking lot, and so forth. However, just because it's legal, that doesn't mean that the homeowner won't get angry if they catch you at it! Many homeowners get mad at people "stealing" their fruit, even if - as often seems to be the case - they will never actually get around to picking it themselves, thus the fruit eventually falls and rots and only the bugs and rats get to enjoy it.

Fruit on actual public lands (like parking strips and city parks) is a much more clear-cut case. It's fair game. But be a good sport: don't damage the tree in picking the fruit, and only pick what you can eat. Don't pick it all just because you can - leave some for the rest of us!

As for picking fruit from trees on foreclosed and abandoned properties: this is illegal. But a lot of people do it. The best advice is to dress respectably (don't wear your scrubbiest clothes, or you might be mistaken for a transient), move quickly, don't loiter, and don't take more than you can eat.

Image courtesy Flickr/f_shields