Photo: 성락 + 연주 — CC BY 2.0 · source
Survives zone 5 through 8
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Known in Korea as bokbunja, the fruit is traditionally fermented into bokbunja-ju, a sweet fruit wine, and used in traditional Korean medicine — though much of the fruit sold commercially under the bokbunja name is actually the related North American black raspberry, Rubus occidentalis, rather than true R. coreanus.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–8
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Arching shrub 2–3 m, canes white-bloomed
- Light
- Partial to full sun (forest margin)
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- East Asia — native to Korea, Japan and China, growing in thickets on slopes, montane valleys, riverbanks and roadsides at elevations from about 100 to 3,100 meters.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Moderately vigorous — arching, prickly biennial canes reach 1–3 m (occasionally to 4.5 m) in a season from the woody rootstock.
- Spacing
- 35 cm (14 in) apart — about 8.2 per m² (7.6 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Pinnately compound leaves with 5 or 7 (rarely 3) ovate to broadly ovate, coarsely serrate leaflets, carried on reddish-brown to purplish, glaucous (whitish-bloomed) canes armed with straight, flattened, curved prickles.
- Root system
- A woody perennial rootstock that sends up new biennial canes and root suckers each year, allowing the plant to expand into spreading clumps over time.
- Fruit description
- A raspberry-type aggregate 5–8 mm across that separates cleanly from its receptacle when picked (leaving the core on the plant, unlike a blackberry); dark red to purplish-black at full ripeness, with a glossier, less downy surface than the related American black raspberry, and a flavor generally described as tart rather than sweet.
- Propagation
- Propagated by division of root suckers in early spring or just before autumn leaf-fall, by root cuttings, or by seed — germination is improved by scarifying seed in acid for about 15 minutes followed by roughly 45–60 days of cold stratification at 4°C, giving germination rates around 73–75%.
- 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
Fertilizing. Grows best in good, well-drained loamy soil in sun or semi-shade with routine feeding; no special acidity requirement is documented, unlike the boggy, strongly acidic soil cloudberry needs.
How it spreads. Spreads by root suckers thrown up from its woody rootstock, forming expanding clumps of biennial canes; outside its native range in parts of Europe it has begun naturalizing along roadsides and disturbed ground, aided by bird-dispersed seed.
Growing tips. Produces biennial canes (floricane-fruiting, like most blackberries and black raspberries) from a perennial woody rootstock — first-year canes are vegetative and covered in a whitish-blue waxy bloom, fruiting the following year on side shoots before dying back, so spent canes should be cut out after harvest. Prefers full sun to part shade and regular pruning to maintain vigor; reported as notably susceptible to honey fungus (Armillaria).
Grow journal
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