Blackberry

The blackberry is a widespread and well known shrub; a bramble fruit (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.

Marionberry is a cross between Chehalem and Olallieberry blackberries. It is said to

"capture the best attributes of both berries and yields an aromatic bouquet and an intense

blackberry flavor". Olallieberry (sometimes spelled ollalieberry) in turn is a cross between

loganberry and youngberry.

The blackberry has a scrambling habit of dense arching stems carrying short curved very

sharp spines, 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, colonising 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. There is some value behind this

legend, as after this date, wetter and cooler weather often allows the fruit to become infected by

various moulds such as Botrytis, which give the fruit an unpleasant flavour 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.

Check out the following recipes that are tagged "Blackberry":
Peanut Butter Jewels, Raspberry Dreams, Blackberry Jam Bars, Iced Blackberry Yogurt, Blackberry Ice Cream, One Step No-Machine Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream, Apple Blackberry Pie, Blackberry Pie, Blackberry Crumb Pie, Blackberry Dumplings Jo Ann, Blackberry Pie, Ice Cream Ribbon Pie, Pineapple Cherry Pie, Wild Blackberry Pie, Blackberry Mint Sorbet, Ices And Sherbets, Almond Tarts, Jelly Tots, Sazerac Rouge, Blanc, Bleu Sorbets In Ice Swa, Quick Pate with Onion-Fruit Marmalade, Crab Won Tons With Blackberry Szechwan Sauce, Crab Won Tons With Blackberry Szechuan Sauce, Blackberry Blackheads, Making Jams and Jellies With Added Pectin, Spanish/English Food Terms, Pan-Sized Lemon-Blackberry Pancakes With Citr, Blackberry Cream Nut Tart, Triple Berry Cobbler, Southern Blackberry Cobbler, Our Family's Plum Pudding 1992, I/II, Blackberry Cobbler MacGuire, Blackberry Cobbler, Blackberry Cobbler, Apricot-Blackberry Cobbler