Berry
Berries include a wide variety of small, pulpy fruits. These evolved as part of plants' long co-evolution with animals. As animals became more and more important as a means by which plants could spread their seeds, plants evolved ways to attract animals. Berries represent a plant's best efforts, over generations of evolutionary time, to tempt and delight animal senses, so that those animals will help spread its seeds. Even those berries that poison humans often use those very same poisons to appeal to other animals, who consider them delicious.
The most well-known berries of the old world — strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, etc. — grew in temperate zones. Many people loved these berries, and went to great efforts to cultivate new varieties that adapted to the changing climate and the new tropical conditions. Meanwhile, berries that originally came from the tropics, like lychees, kumquats, sea grapes, and jabuticabas have proliferated under the new conditions.
#Human relationship
Human ancestors loved berries before they walked on two feet. No one would pass up the opportunity to enjoy a few ripe berries in the summer while hunting or gathering, and many go out specifically to gather them into baskets to take back to camp. Besides food, people often seek out specific types of berries to make dyes.
#Berry People
While everyone eats berries, a community that focuses on berries takes that relationship further in one way or another. A few examples include:
- Distinguishing the berries you want to collect from the ones that could kill you requires deep botanical knowledge. Every community preserves a treasure trove of ethnobotanical expertise in their oral tradition, but those communities that specialize in berries must take this even further. Such communities have elaborate mythologies stuffed with clues to help distinguish safe berries from poisonous ones. These stories invariably serve other purposes, as well, though, including life lessons and moral instruction. These societies often have high-context cultures, where people regularly communicate using metaphors drawn from this oral tradition, referring to the properties of various kinds of berries.
- For any community that focuses on its relationship with berries, summer means going to the berry camps. For communities that live in villages at other times of the year, this can mean seasonal egalitarianism, as the village splits into several bands for the season. Life in the berry camps may have roles, mores, and customs that differ from the rest of the year. Your community might have different rules or taboos that only apply to the berry camps, so as not to offend the berries, or to help them regrow each year. In fact, each camp may have its own distinct customs.
- Some communities mash berries with honey to help preserve them and store the resulting jam in ceramic jars. This provides a valuable trade good for the community. This also makes honey-gathering even more valued than in other communities, while the resulting ceramics industry will require special sites like a kiln.