Chinese raspberry

Survives zone 6 through 9

Harvest calendar

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

Bright red, good-flavored berries on long arching canes — historically rated one of the finest-fruiting Chinese Rubus species, though grown today mainly as an ornamental groundcover or trained over a wall.

Hardiness

Zone 6–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Scrambling shrub, canes 2–4 m

Light

Partial to full sun (forest margin)

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Central and western China; introduced to Western cultivation in 1900 via Ernest Wilson's plant-collecting expeditions

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–4 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

Narrowly heart-shaped (ovate-cordate) leaves 9–18 cm long, often angular-lobed at the base, reddish-bronze when young, glabrous on both sides with sparsely toothed margins

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

Bright red, small drupelet clusters that turn an almost opalescent orange-red at full ripeness; vigorous plants can carry fruiting panicles over 60 cm long

Propagation

Seed (cold-stratified, sown in autumn), semi-ripe cuttings in July/August, or tip layering in July

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.