Mysore raspberry

Photo: Forest & Kim Starr — CC BY 3.0 · source

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.

A vigorous, thorny raspberry grown for its sweet purple-black fruit in its native range, but classed among the world's worst invasive weeds where introduced — in the Galápagos it forms dense thickets that displace native Scalesia forest, and in Hawaii it carries a High Risk noxious-weed rating.

Spread warning. Listed on Hawaii's Noxious Weed List (Hawaii-Pacific Weed Risk Assessment score of 19, High Risk) and considered one of the worst invasive weeds in the Galápagos Islands, where it has spread across Santa Cruz, San Cristóbal, Isabela, Floreana, and Santiago since its introduction in 1968, displacing native Scalesia pedunculata forest and rendering farmland unusable

Hardiness

Zone 8–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Arching shrub 1.5–2.5 m

Light

Full sun to partial

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Montane and subtropical

Native range

Southern and eastern Asia, from Afghanistan and the Himalaya through China, India, and Southeast Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines

Status

Both wild and cultivated

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

Compound leaves with 5–9 serrated leaflets on stems armed with sharp hooked thorns 3–7 mm long

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

A subglobose aggregate of drupelets 1–2 cm across, ripening purple-black, juicy and sweet (about 7.8% sugar content)

Propagation

Seed (about 81% germination after roughly nine months buried in soil, remaining viable for years to decades) or by rooting of cane tips

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.