Photo: Forest & Kim Starr — CC BY 3.0 · source
Survives zone 5 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Sweet-tart wild blackberry, good fresh; a parent of several southern US cultivars.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- July–Aug
- Mature size
- Erect thorny cane 1–3 m
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Eastern North America — from Massachusetts south to Virginia and across much of the southeastern United States, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia — where it grows in dry to moist thickets and woodland margins.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast — canes make 1–3 m in a season
- Spacing
- 200 cm (79 in) apart — about 4 m² (43 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Compound leaves, typically with toothed, saw-edged leaflets (giving rise to the common name "sawtooth blackberry"), borne on arching canes armed with stout, curved prickles.
- Root system
- A woody, perennial rootstock that sends up new biennial canes each year and produces root suckers, allowing the plant to spread clonally and form colonies over time.
- Fruit description
- A blackberry-type aggregate up to about 25 mm long, with rather large, juicy drupelets that ripen from red through to black; unlike a raspberry, the fleshy white core (receptacle) stays inside the fruit when picked rather than staying on the plant.
- Propagation
- Propagated by tip-layering of arching canes in July, by root cuttings or division of suckers taken in early spring or just before leaf-fall in autumn, and by seed — stored seed needs about a month of cold stratification near 3°C before sowing.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile (facultatively apomictic)
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Tolerates light, medium and heavy soils across mildly acid, neutral and mildly alkaline pH — a moderate annual mulch of compost or balanced feed in spring is sufficient; it does not need the peaty acidity that boreal Rubus species require.
How it spreads. Spreads by root suckers from the woody rootstock and by tip-layering, where arching cane tips root on contact with soil, forming dense clonal thickets typical of eastern US blackberries.
Growing tips. A biennial-caned (floricane) blackberry — canes grow vegetatively in year one and fruit on that same wood in year two before dying back, so spent floricanes should be pruned out after harvest. Grows in semi-shade or full sun and prefers consistently moist soil; forms dense, arching, prickly thickets on woodland edges and disturbed ground.
Companion planting. A blackberry, and like most blackberries generally listed juglone-sensitive — keep away from black walnut's root zone.
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