Survives zone 8 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Grown chiefly as a foliage plant rather than for its fruit — an arching evergreen Himalayan shrub with large, glossy, deep-green leaves that are silvery beneath and finely veined. Claret-red flowers in summer are followed by orange-red fruit in autumn; it benefits from shelter from cold winds at the cooler edge of its range.
- Hardiness
- Zone 8–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Scrambling evergreen shrub, canes 1–3 m
- Light
- Partial to shade
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Subtropical
- Native range
- Eastern Himalaya to Assam, extending into parts of southwestern China, Bhutan, Tibet and northern India.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast — canes make 1–3 m in a season
- Spacing
- 150 cm (59 in) apart — about 2.3 m² (24 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Large, glossy, deep-green leaves, silvery on the underside, with numerous closely spaced parallel veins — the plant's main ornamental feature.
- Root system
- A perennial crown and shallow spreading root system in the top 30–40 cm, carrying biennial canes: each cane grows one year, fruits the next, then dies. New shoots come from buds on both the crown and the roots, which is why a bramble returns from root fragments left after digging and why it is so hard to remove once settled.
- Fruit description
- Orange-red fruit produced in autumn, following claret-red summer flowers — an aggregate fruit typical of the genus, though little is documented on its size or flavor.
- Propagation
- Tip layering is the natural method for the trailing kinds: bury a cane tip in late summer and sever it once rooted. Erect kinds sucker freely and a rooted sucker can simply be lifted. Root cuttings in winter also work. Seed needs a long cold stratification and is slow.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile
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
Growing tips. Valued in cultivation mainly for its handsome, deeply veined evergreen foliage rather than for its sparse fruit; give it shelter from freezing winds, since cold, drying exposure is its main limiting factor outside its Himalayan cloud-forest origin.
Grow journal
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