Fruit Seasons

Fruit season lasts ALL YEAR (tropical/evergreens like citrus and avocado and                   through winter), but deciduous fruit start in mid May (or even earlier in the Central Valley and southern California) with mayhaw and sweet cherries (loquats ripe as early as March, but that is evergreen) and strawberries.

And soon, (beginning in early June) Juneberries (Amelanchier alnifolia) and raspberries and Rubus ursinus.

Then soon (late June) apricots and Howard’s Miracle plum.

Early July:  Santa Rosa plums, breba-crop figs like Desert King.

Late July:  First apples (Gravenstein).  Apples continue through January, even February and March (Granny Smith is latest?, also Hauer).

Summer-ripening bird food in the form of berries and fruits:

Figs, apricot, cherry, mulberry, blueberry, elderberry, juneberry, Elaeagnus (silverberry), E. black cherry (Prunus serotina) are big favorites.

Fall-color season in California starts ca. June or July with poison oak.  Lasts through January and February with late liquidambar, although nothing after December looks “right” in fall color.

Winter-bird season starts (for land birds, that is) mainly at end of September more or less coincident with start of real fall-color season and start of rainy season.

“Natural” winter bird food starts with the abundant weed-seed crop left from summer (this continues with luck, through winter) and, with onset of rain, with lush, tender, newly sprouting grass, which is cropped avidly by crowned sparrows et al.  (They also appreciate new-sprouting peas, clovers, etc.)

As fall progresses into October and November, most of the winter-standby berry crops color up and ripen:  pyracantha, cotoneaster, hawthorn.