Blackberry
Rubus fruticosus agg.
Alternative names: Blackberry, Black heg, Blegs
Blackberries are the fruit which grow on Brambles – those thorny, sinuous and ridiculously strong vines which can be found taking over any area if given half a chance. The sweet fruits which brambles produce are perhaps the one reason that gardeners and hedglayers up and down the country aren’t more severe with their treatment of bramble.
My favourite quote about blackberries is found in a pocket sized book we bought at a second-hand book shop (often gold mines for older texts about wild food and rural traditions) it simply says “Too well known to need description…”
Where do Blackberries Grow?
Blackberry plants are incredibly resilient and will grow in a large variety of soil types and conditions around the UK. Classed as very common in the British Isles, brambles are only really absent from the highlands, and can be found elsewhere in woodlands, on waste ground / brownfield sites, scrubby areas, hedges and even encroaching into grasslands and dune habitats. Brambles have a perennial rootstock, meaning that once they are established in an area, they will shoot up year after year unless the roots are dug up; simply put, once you know where to find blackberries you can return to the same spot again and again provided that nobody digs them up.
Is Bramble Edible?
Blackberries are edible straight off the shrub and are part of our rich history of wild food in the UK, blackberrying as an annual tradition is an activity which has passed down through generations and remains as a seasonal marker for those who live in both rural and urban areas. Harvesting the fruits from these spiny plants is something that is almost part of our DNA as it has been occurring for thousands of years – blackberry seeds were found in the stomach of a Neolithic man.
Blackberries are not only edible raw, but they are a versatile fruit which lend well to pairing with other fruits in desserts, or as the main ingredient in a game sauce. This is a fruit with a flavour which changes with cooking and offers a depth and complexity which doesn’t appear in the uncooked fruits.
One of the less well know things about brambles, is that the young leaves and shoots are also edible and can be found throughout the growing seasons (from Spring until Winter) Young blackberry leaves make an interesting addition to salads and contain the flavour of blackberries but without any sweetness or juice, they can also be infused in hot water to make a blackberry ‘tea’, which may have a familiar taste to anybody who is a regular fruit tea drinker.
How to Identify Brambles
The brambles on which blackberries grow are long, rambling and thorny tendrils which grow towards the light and sprawl over anything which offers support whilst putting on inches of growth each week. Brambles are essentially an underground root system which produce new shoots each spring, the shoots are covered in thorns which hook backwards slightly down the stem – these thorns are soft and rubbery at the young tips of the shoots but become woody and strong as the stem matures. Leaves are serrated and grow in groups of three and the white to pale pink flowers develop in late spring into early summer.
The fruits, termed blackberries, start off green in colour when first developing and then turn through shades of red until they become a dark purple / black colour all over. Brambles produce fruit from late summer into early autumn and although the 400+ subspecies of bramble do have some minor differences in appearance they are mostly only identifiable by experts in the field.
Potential dangers and misidentification
Although brambles are referred to by the scientific name Rubus fruticosus agg. which refers to the aggregation of 400+ subspecies which exist in the UK, there are few dangers associated with blackberry foraging. All subspecies of bramble produce edible fruits, the flavours are variable, but are also affected by weather conditions as the fruits are developing, location of the plant and presence of mould.
Tradition has it that you shouldn’t pick blackberries after old Michaelmas as this is when the devil was cast down from heaven and landed in a patch of brambles, he then spat on the berries, making them taste bad. There is a little truth in this, Autumn is quite late on in the season for collecting blackberries and those which develop in these shorter days have less flavour and spoil much more quickly.
***A NOTE OF CAUTION***
Foraging and hunting for wild food is a potentially hazardous activity.
Whilst we do our best to make sure these species and wild food guides are as accurate as possible there is ALWAYS the possibility of the user (or the author…) misidentifying a plant or other item, and the descriptions given might also apply to similar toxic plants.
Common names cannot be relied upon as they change from region to region, and there are some similar names for very different plants. When researching species on the internet you can sometimes find a common name referring to a completely different species to the one you are trying to learn about.
You should always be confident of the identification of a plant, fungus or lichen BEFORE you touch it and especially before you put it anywhere near your mouth.
The best way to do that is by checking with a good wild flower key or identification book, and ideally cross-referencing between more than one book.
Or – as all of the cool people say: Never Munch on a Hunch.
Amy is a UK wild food instructor and naturalist with over a decade of experience working and volunteering with ecological consultants, local wildlife charities and nationwide surveys. She is constantly developing her knowledge about wild edibles and studying how we can contribute to the natural environments which mean so much to us.
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