Blackberry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the fruit. For the wireless e-mail device, see BlackBerry. For other uses, see Blackberry (disambiguation).
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Blackberries on a bush
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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.
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.
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 Haraldskζr Woman that blackberries were consumed 2500 years ago.
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Commercial cultivars
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.
Eastern, semi-erect blackberries were primarily developed by the USDA-ARS in Beltsville, Maryland. They 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, Smoothstem, Hull Thornless, Dirksen Thornless and Black Satin.
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-JimTM and Prime-JanTM 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.
Additional photos
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Blackberry
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Blackberry bush in late June in UK
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Ripening blackberry fruit
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Many ripe blackberries
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Prickles
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See also
- Black Raspberry, a North American fruit sometimes confused with blackberries.
- Redberry mite, a common pest of North American blackberry crops.
External links
- Ways to Process and Use Blackberries An Article on historical uses and ways to process blackberries
- Blackberry Pollination Images
- h2g2 article on Blackberries
- Botanical Information
- USDA Plants Classification Report
- From Idea to Supermarket:The Process of Berry Breeding Article on berry breeding including pictures of blackberry emasculation and pollination
Categories: Fruit | Rubus | Rosaceae | Grocer's Encyclopedia | Invasive species