It’s getting to be that time of year: Apples are growing, blackberries have ripened – and pretty soon, you’ll be able to find piles of smashed, rotten, unpicked fruit on a city sidewalk or in a suburban parking lot near you.
It’s hard to believe, but there are plenty of people out there who own fruit trees and never harvest the fruit. And, sadly, Rhode Island law prohibits the rest of us from helping ourselves before it goes to waste.
Whether anyone actually follows those rules or enforces them is another story, of course. But before you go foraging this fall, you might as well know what the rules say.
Is it a crime to pick fruit from someone else’s tree in Rhode Island?
Broadly speaking, taking fruit, flowers or anything else that is growing on someone else’s property without permission is considered theft – just as if you came and took one of their lawn chairs.
And while it’s rare to hear about anyone getting arrested for picking a stranger’s fruit nowadays, that wasn’t always the case.