Swamp dewberry

Photo: Wikimedia Commons — Public domain · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Also called bristly dewberry — a true creeping groundcover rather than an upright bramble, semi-evergreen and rooting wherever the stem tips touch soil. Fruit is edible but sour, better cooked than eaten fresh.

Hardiness

Zone 3–8

Habit

Groundcover

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Aug–Sept

Mature size

Trailing groundcover 10–30 cm tall, the stems running to about 2.4 m along the ground

Light

Full sun to part shade

Soil pH

5.0–7.0 (acid to neutral)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Ontario east to Nova Scotia, south to South Carolina, west to Tennessee, north to Iowa and Wisconsin — moist thickets, open woods and clearings.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate

Spacing

120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Three-parted (trifoliate) compound, coarsely toothed, bristly, leaflets 2.5–7.5 cm

Root system

Shallow and wide-creeping, with the trailing canes rooting wherever a tip touches soil — the plant advances as a rooted mat rather than from a single crown. Easy to propagate and correspondingly hard to confine.

Fruit description

Black or red aggregate drupelets, about 12 mm, sour

Propagation

Division, seed, or stem cutting; also self-layers naturally where trailing stem tips touch soil.

Pollination

Self-fertile and bee-pollinated — a single plant fruits. Bumblebees do the heavy work; poor pollination shows as crumbly, part-formed berries with only some drupelets filled.

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.