Shrubs - Part 5 - Brambles - Part 2
What is green when it is red?
(The answer is at the end of this article)
Blackberry, raspberry, black raspberry. What's the difference? The names seem to be used with abandon to describe plants with fruit ranging from purple, orange, amber, pale-yellow and red to black. I'd always thought that raspberries had red fruit and blackberries had black fruit and that was that. But, I find that this isn't actually the case.
The difference lies, not in the color of the berry, but in the way it is connected to the receptacle. When ripe, raspberries separate from their receptacles (the central knob or core), producing a hollow core and blackberries and other dewberries don't; the core is part of the ripe fruit. There are also differences in the cane, which we'll get in to a bit later.
Black Raspberry
I've identified a blackberry and a black raspberry in my USDA zone 7 woodland. One I enjoy, when it behaves, and one that I don't.
Rubus occidentalis, black or black-cap raspberry, has intrigued me over the years. The white coated stems make me think of Rubus cockburnianus, for whom I've been searching (along with the beautiful R. thibetanus) for many years. It's not really on the same decorative level as R. cockburnianus, a marvelously winter white-stemmed plant with small purple-red flowers that is vigorous to the point of invasiveness and not a plant for a small garden, but if there is room, it's well worth finding - not an easy task, this side of the pond, though it is regularly grown in the UK.
R. occidentalis - at least the ones in my woods and garden - is not as large nor as showy, but the mature canes are white, while the new ones are wine-red with a white bloom, supplying a change in the garden from the green or brown stems on most plants.
You can see the silvery powder better in this close-up. It will rub off when rubbed or scratched - as evidenced by the odd dark markings in this scan that show the true stem color through the bloom.
These members of the family Rosaceae are native North American plants. They are actually not woody shrubs, but perennials with biennial canes that overlap in age, giving the impression of a permanently woody shrub.
As on all brambles, first year growth is called a primocane, and consists of leaves and stem, but no flowers. The second year growth is called a floricane, which produces a different set of leaves, flowers and fruit. Old, flowering canes die off after flowering and fruiting.
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