Sweet, juicy scuppernongs are here, briefly

Good news: Scuppernongs are in season. Get 'em while they last at any produce store in Chinatown.

Name doesn't ring a bell? Don't remember reading about them in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!?

Maybe you know them as bullis or swamp grapes.

The greenish-bronze scuppernong and its deep purple cousin, the muscadine, are about twice as large as the table grapes we usually see in the local supermarkets.

They come with skin that's thick and tart, pulp that's juicy and sweet, and seeds that may be too bitter for your taste - a bit reminiscent of concord grapes.

Named after the area in which they were first found growing wild - along the Scuppernong River in North Carolina - they are that state's official fruit.

Both varieties are good for eating au naturel or for use in making jellies, jams and wines.

And they're good for you.

The skin is full of fiber and the seeds have an extract that's said to aid in improving memory and other brain functions.

They're high in vitamin C and in resveratrol - one of the compounds in red wine that is believed to help reduce the risk of heart disease. Plus, they've got potassium, vitamin B and trace minerals.

Muscadine wines may have as much as seven times more resveratrol than other wines, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Though they're still found in the wild, the muscadines and scuppernongs sold locally are from commercial growers such as Paulk Vineyards in Georgia. The season continues through September.

The fact that these grapes have only recently been available locally - and still not at supermarkets - reminds me of the wild berries we picked as inner-city kids.

In summer, the narrow alleys behind the row houses in Logan, where I grew up, were fragrant with honeysuckle and thick with some mysterious deep-blue berries that reminded me of jeweled earrings hanging from thorny bushes.

Nobody I knew could tell what they were, but we all knew they were delicious - as is, or in a bowl with vanilla ice cream. Best of all, they were free for the picking.

In July, I'd ride my bike up and down the alleys, making a mental log of the location of each bush. Then I'd watch and wait until the time was ripe.

Years later when I married, I learned my father-in-law, Lou, considered himself a wild-berry-picking champ.

He said he knew of a secret stock of thorny bushes where absolutely delicious purplish berries grew. The best were in the back of the bunch, he told me, and he'd developed a winning strategy for getting to them.

He'd dress in a long-sleeved shirt, his long pants tucked into socks and workboots to guard against thorns - and the insects competing for the crop. He always had a thick cigar in his mouth anyway and when he was out berry picking, the cigar smoke kept mosquitoes or bees at bay. He said he could get berries by the bushel.

He told me all this in the spring - insisting the berries he picked were called loganberries, and they most certainly were not like the ones I grew up with in Logan. I was doubtful. Logan equals loganberries seemed too simple.

And no, he said, I could not accompany him on his harvest.

As late summer approached, I salivated - waiting to taste this new breed of berry. Sure enough, he came home with buckets of berries, and sure enough, they were the same as the ones I'd had as a child. I never told him that, preferring instead to let him think he'd introduced me to something new.

Apparently, the loganberry got its name from a California horticulturist/lawyer named James Harvey Logan (1841-1928), who crossbred blackberries and raspberries.

James H. Logan's roots may or may not be traced back to Philadelphia's much earlier James Logan (1674-1751). Our James Logan, for whom my neighborhood was named, experimented with plants too, and was an early tutor of botanist John Bartram. He went on to serve as mayor of Philadelphia.

Maybe you remember picking wild berries and eating them right off the vine, without checking with your mother first. They could have been tayberries or boysenberries, marionberries or olallieberries. Perhaps they were my loganberries.