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Brambles is a catch-all term for wild thorny canes that are both weed and welcome opportunity for berry foraging. There are three common species, two native and one nonnative.
Black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) have been ripening in Rockbridge over the past week and are native to Virginia. There is also a wild red raspberry (Rubus idaeus) but your columnist has never seen these in Rockbridge and this species is apparently more common in northern Pennsylvania and farther north.
Blackberries (Rubus allegheniensis) is also considered native to Virginia and generally the ripe fruits are ready for picking in Rockbridge about two weeks after black raspberries.
The best way to distinguish black raspberries from blackberries is to look for the receptacle. The receptacle is the fleshy center core that the berry grows around. When you pick a raspberry, the receptacle gets left behind, which causes the raspberry to have a cup-shaped cavity in the center. However, when you pick a blackberry, the receptacle stays with the fruit, leaving a spongy white center in the blackberry. Blackberry fruits tend to be oblong with larger juice pods encapsulating the seeds and have tart flavor. And raspberries are more rounded, have smaller pods encapsulating the seeds and have a sweeter flavor.
Japanese wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius) are common in Rockbridge but are not native but rather were introduced to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Their thorns are not as pronounced as the blackberry or raspberry and in Rockbridge they generally ripen at the same time as wild blackberries. The fruit of the wineberry is similar in shape to the raspberry but the berries tend to be more fragile and not as sweet. Japanese wineberries are often mistakenly identified as red raspberries.
The canes of all three of these species are biennial with the first-year canes (primocane) being long, unbranched, and sterile (does not form flowers). In their second year, the primocanes develop lateral branching. Flower and fruit production are only on second-year canes (floricanes). While each cane only lives for two years, the plant itself is perennial, with new canes produced each year. Canes may seem to bear annually but a wild bramble berry patch in Rockbridge has new unproductive canes emerging mixed with the bearing canes, and these new canes are the source of berries the following year. This is one reason why berries are generally found in untended thickets left unmowed for two years or more.
Foraging for berries can be fun but foragers should always get permission from the landowner, obey traffic laws, take all precautions if attempting to harvest a roadside patch, and always check themselves for ticks after foraging.
Brambles can also damage fences, their thorns can make a property virtually inaccessible, and they harbor diseases detrimental to improved more productive varieties of blackberry and raspberry. Folks attempting to grow improved varieties of blackberry or raspberry will have higher yields and less disease and fungal problems if all wild brambles within 300 yards of the plantation are cleared. Repeated mowing should eventually exhaust the bramble root system but application of the certain herbicides either at flowering or early September when leaves are still active and vegetative can bring outof- control brambles under control.
The week’s column was drawn from a number of excellent sources, including the online Virginia Native Plant Finder, publications from land grant university extension services, and an article by Extension Master Gardeners in Tioga County, Pa.
