Blackberry

Blackberries on a bush

Plant Info

Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Rosales
Family:	Rosaceae
Subfamily:	Rosoideae
Genus:	Rubus
Subgenus:	Eubatus

Species

Rubus fruticosus - Common Blackberry

and hundreds more microspecies
(the subgenus also includes the dewberries)

The blackberry is a widespread and well known shrub; commonly called a bramble in the eastern U.S. and Europe. (Genus Rubus, Family Rosaceae) growing to 3 m (10 ft) and producing a soft-bodied fruit popular for use in desserts, jams, seedless jellies and sometimes wine. Several Rubus species are called blackberry and since the species easily hybridize, there are many cultivars with more than one species in their ancestry.

The blackberry has a scrambling habit of dense arching stems carrying short curved very sharp spines (although many thornless/spineless cultivars have been developed), the branches rooting from the node tip when they reach the ground. It is very pervasive, growing at fast daily rates in woods, scrub, hillsides and hedgerows, colonizing large areas in a relatively short time. It will tolerate poor soil, and is an early coloniser of wasteland and building sites. It has palmate leaves of three to five leaflets with flowers of white or pink appearing from May to August, ripening to a black or dark purple fruit, the "blackberry."

The blackberry is also the fruit of the blackberry plant. In proper botanical language, it is not a berry at all, but instead an aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets.

In the photo at the upper right, the early flowers have formed more drupelets than the later ones. This can be a symptom of exhausted reserves in the plant's roots, marginal pollinator populations, or where a small change in conditions, such as a rainy day or a day too hot for bees to work after early morning, can reduce the number of bee visits/pollen grains delivered to the flower, thus reducing the quality of the fruit. The drupelets only develop around ovules which are fertilized by the male gamete from a pollen grain.

Blackberry blossoms are good nectar producers, and large areas of wild blackberries will yield a medium to dark, fruity honey.

Blackberry flower.

Superstition in the UK holds that blackberries should not be picked after 15th September as the devil has claimed them, having left a mark on the leaves (in the same way a dog might). There is some value behind this legend, as after this date, wetter and cooler weather often allows the fruit to become infected by various molds such as Botrytis, which give the fruit an unpleasant flavor and may be toxic. The blackberry is known to contain polyphenol antioxidants, naturally occurring chemicals that can upregulate certain beneficial metabolic processes in mammals. It is not advisable to use or eat blackberries growing close to busy roads due to the accumulated toxins from the traffic. ^[1]

The related but smaller European dewberry (R. caesius) can be distinguished by the white, waxy coating on the fruits, which also usually have fewer drupelets.

In some parts of the world, such as in Chile, New Zealand and the Pacific Northwest region of North America, some blackberry species, particularly Rubus armeniacus (syn. R. procerus, 'Himalaya') and Rubus laciniatus ('Evergreen') are naturalized and considered an invasive species and a serious weed.

The blackberry can be reasonably deduced to have been consumed by humans for thousands of years, but there is, in fact, forensic evidence from the find of Iron Age Haraldskær Woman that blackberries were consumed 2500 years ago.

Commercial cultivars

Template:Globalize/USA

Black Butte blackberry.

Marion (marketed as marionberry) is the most important cultivar and is from a cross between Chehalem and Olallie (commonly called olallieberry) blackberries. It is said to "capture the best attributes of both berries and yields an aromatic bouquet and an intense blackberry flavor" [1]. Olallie in turn is a cross between loganberry and youngberry. 'Marion', 'Chehalem' and 'Olallie are' just three of the many trailing blackberry cultivars developed by the USDA-ARS blackberry breeding program in Corvallis, Oregon. The most recent cultivars released from this program are the thornless cultivars Black Diamond, Black Pearl and Nightfall as well as the very early ripening Obsidian and Metolius. Some of the other cultivars from this program are Waldo, Siskiyou, Black Butte, Kotata, Pacific and Cascade. Trailing blackberries are vigorous, crown forming, require a trellis for support, and are less cold hardy than the erect or semi-erect blackberries. In addition to the Pacific Northwest of the USA, these types do well in similar climates such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Chile, and the Mediterranean countries.

Eastern, semi-erect blackberries were primarily developed by the USDA-ARS in Beltsville, Maryland. The source of thornlessness used in this program came from 'Merton Thornless' which was developed at the John Innes Institute in the United Kingdom. The semi-erect blackberries are thornless, crown forming, incredibly vigorous, and need a trellis for support. Cultivars of this type include the very popular Chester Thornless as well as Triple Crown, Loch Ness, 'Loch Tay', Smoothstem, Hull Thornless, Dirksen Thornless and Black Satin. Recently, the cultivar 'Cacanska Bestrna' (also called "Cacak Thornless") has been developed in Serbia and has been planted on many thousands of hectares there.

The University of Arkansas has been at the center of developing cultivars of erect blackberries. These types are less vigorous than the semi-erect types and produce new canes from root initials (therefore they spread underground like raspberries). There are both thornless and thorny cultivars from this program, some of the most popular are Navaho, Ouachita, Cherokee, Apache, Arapaho and Kiowa.

The University of Arkansas is also responsible for developing the primocane fruiting blackberries. In raspberries, these types are called primocane fruiting, fall fruiting, or everbearing and have been around for some time. Prime-Jim^TM and Prime-Jan^TM were released in 2004 and are the first cultivars of primocane fruiting blackberry. They grow much like the other erect cultivars described above, however the canes that emerge in the spring, will flower in mid-summer and fruit in late summer or fall. The fall crop has its highest quality when it ripens in cool climates.

Blackberry production in Mexico has exploded in the past decade. While this industry was initially based on the cultivar 'Brazos' it is now based on 'Tupy'. 'Brazos' was an old erect blackberry cultivar developed in Texas in 1959. 'Tupy' was developed in Brazil and released in the late 1990s. 'Tupy' has the erect blackberry 'Comanche' as one parent, but the other parent is unknown. In order to produce these blackberries in these areas of Mexico where there is no winter chilling to stimulate flower bud development, chemical defoliation and application of growth regulators are used to bring the plants into bloom.

Illini Hardy a semi-erect thorny cultivar introduced by the University of Illinois is cane hardy in zone 5, where traditionally blackberry production has been problematic, since primocanes often failed to survive the winter.

The blackberry tends to be red in color during its unripe ("green") phase, hence the old expression that "Blackberries are red when they're green."

The blackberry is also a very spiritual plant for the Okiwabi tribe. The Okiwabi believed the this plant was a key into the realm of the spirit world. On many occasions The Okiwabi would cover themselves with the juices the are found in this berry, and then dance around a tribal fire praying for the spirits in the spirit world to come and take them away.