Japanese raspberry

Photo: えだ2 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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.

Grown as much for its maple-like, deeply lobed foliage and drooping white flowers as for its fruit — the aggregate berries turn a luminous, translucent yellow-orange when ripe and are juicy and edible, though the plant is used ornamentally at least as often as it is grown for fruit.

Hardiness

Zone 5–8

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Erect shrub 1–2.5 m

Light

Partial to full sun (forest margin)

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Japan (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku) and Korea, in hills and low mountains

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

Fast — canes make 1–3 m in a season

Spacing

180 cm (71 in) apart — about 3.2 m² (35 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Distinctly palmate, maple-like leaves with five deep, sharply serrated lobes

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

Round aggregate berries about 20 mm across that ripen from green to a luminous, translucent yellow-orange; juicy and edible raw or cooked

Propagation

Seed (stratified), half-ripe wood cuttings in July/August, tip layering in July, or division in spring or autumn

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.