Photo: AerobicFox — CC0 · 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.
Large, sweet, heavy-cropping — the commercial-scale wild blackberry.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Aug–Sept
- Mature size
- ⚠ Extremely vigorous — canes to 6 m, tip-rooting; the hardest species here to contain
- Light
- Full sun — crops heavily in sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Armenia and northern Iran — not the Himalaya, despite the entrenched common name Himalayan blackberry. The species' origin was muddled in the literature for decades (often given as western European, and the plant published under the names R. procerus and R. discolor), and the misleading common name outlasted the confusion. Armenian blackberry is the accurate one.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Very fast — canes of 6–12 m in a single season on good ground
- Spacing
- 300 cm (118 in) apart — about 9 m² (97 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Palmately compound leaves with 3–5 obovate to elliptic leaflets 4–8 cm long with irregularly serrate margins, dark green and glossy above, gray-green and softly pubescent beneath; canes are angular (roughly five-sided in cross-section) and armed with stout, hooked prickles up to 1 cm long with broad flattened bases.
- Root system
- A persistent, woody root crown with spreading rhizomes that resprout vigorously after cutting or fire, plus adventitious rooting wherever a cane tip touches the ground — together these give the species exceptional resilience and colonizing ability.
- Fruit description
- A blackberry-type aggregate of drupelets 1.3–2 cm across, black and glossy at maturity, sweet-flavored; the fleshy receptacle stays within the picked fruit as in other blackberries.
- Propagation
- Spreads and is propagated readily by tip-layering — cane tips root wherever they touch soil — as well as by root cuttings/division of the root crown; it is rarely propagated deliberately in cultivation given its invasive tendencies, and most new infestations arise from bird-dispersed seed rather than intentional planting.
- Pollination
- SELF-FERTILE (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
How it spreads. One of the most aggressively spreading Rubus species documented — it colonizes via root suckers from the crown and rhizomes, via tip-layering (cane tips rooting at nodes on contact with soil), and via prolific seed set that is widely dispersed by birds, small mammals and water. Introduced to North America in 1885 for its fruit, it escaped cultivation and is now a listed noxious weed across the Pacific Northwest and has also naturalized in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Hawaii, forming dense, impenetrable thickets that outcompete native vegetation and suppress tree seedling establishment.
Growing tips. Primocanes (first-year canes) grow stout, angled and can reach several meters before arching over and trailing along the ground; floricanes (second-year canes) branch laterally, flower and fruit, then die back. Because of its severe invasiveness outside cultivation, many regional agencies recommend against planting it at all and advise prompt removal of any that appear, including the root crown, to prevent regrowth.
Grow journal
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