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Blackberry
(Rubus allegheniensis)
ROO-bus al-a-gay-nee-EN-sis
This is a native plant.
I like the description in Wyman so here it is: An erect, arching plant with vicious hooked thorns and prickles: leaflets 3 to 5, white flowers
and sweet black berries. This plant spreads rapidly and in good soil could become a serious pest. Native from Nova Scotia to Missouri.
The blackberry has always had its fans, in spite
of its wicked thorns, because of the sweet fruit.
It has also been valued as a medicinal plant that seems to help diarrhea. An herb book mentioned that blackberry jelly is a very pleasant cure for that very unpleasant malady. My grandmother, born in 1889, swore by blackberry brandy for cure of that problem.
Note there are 5 leaflets in this compound leaf.
Field sparrow
The blackberry and dewberry species are so numerous and "mixed up" that book after book commented on that fact. Euell Gibbons, in his popular book Stalking the Wild Asparagus, commented he would leave all arguments to the botanists and he would call any of them borne on upright stalks like these blackberry. If the plant has these berries on a trailing vine it will be called a dewberry.
The photo below of a patch of blackberry is in a tiny woodlands clearing.
Birds appreciate the blackberry as much as we do! The cardinals in these photos taken down south are perched on a blackberry cane. The cardinals that visit my bramble patch look just like their southern cousins. Cardinals seem to get up earlier than other birds and they seem to sta up later! Most birds aren't seen around my house when the light is quite dim in earliest dawn or dusk, but Mr. Cardinal can be heard, then spotted standing guard as Mrs. Cardinal flies down to the ground for a late dinner. They are so cautious about coming to feed I always wonder how they have enough time to eat enough during the day. Perhaps that is why they stay up late.
Mrs. Cardinal, with
her olive coloring
blushed with red.
Mr. Cardinal is hard to miss!
I wonder how they avoid
landing on thorns.
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