Photo: Margalob — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 5 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 distinctive Pacific Northwest native — among the first brambles to flower each spring, with fruit that ranges from salmon-orange to deep red depending on the individual plant. Historically an important indigenous food source, eaten fresh (the berries are too watery to dry) often alongside dried salmon roe or oolichan grease; the young peeled shoots were also gathered in spring and eaten raw or cooked, and were traded fresh among some coastal peoples.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Erect suckering shrub 1–4 m, thicket-forming
- Light
- PARTIAL — a moist forest/streamside species; fruits in part shade
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Coastal
- Native range
- Native to the Pacific coast of North America, from south-central Alaska through British Columbia to northern California, typically in moist forest, stream banks and forest-edge clearings below about 300 m.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast and vigorous — new canes can reach 2–4 m in a single season once established, with rhizome suckers appearing well beyond the original planting hole.
- Spacing
- 120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Trifoliate, toothed leaflets on an upright-arching, only lightly prickled cane 1.5–4 m tall — an erect suckering shrub, not a trailing or tip-rooting bramble.
- Root system
- An extensive branching rhizome network at shallow-to-moderate depth, from which new canes sucker readily; rhizomes and root crowns resprout quickly after fire, flooding, or cutting back.
- Fruit description
- A raspberry-like aggregate berry roughly the size of a cultivated raspberry, hollow-cored when picked, with color varying from pale salmon-orange to deep red on different plants. Juicy and mild — softer and less intensely sweet than a true raspberry, but pleasant fresh, in jam, or dried into fruit leather.
- Propagation
- By division of rooted suckers or rhizome sections in spring or autumn, by semi-ripe cuttings in July–August, or by tip-layering in July; seed needs about a month of cold stratification at roughly 3°C.
- 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 naturally in moist, fertile streamside soil — an annual mulch of compost or leaf-mold is usually enough. Avoid heavy nitrogen feeding, which only accelerates the vigorous rhizome suckering it already does on its own.
How it spreads. Spreads aggressively by branching underground rhizomes, suckering to form dense, multi-stemmed clonal thickets that can reach several meters across — a root barrier is worth considering in a small garden.
Growing tips. One of the first Rubus species to flower each spring, well ahead of most raspberries and blackberries. Canes are biennial — new primocanes each year from the rhizome, fruiting the following year as floricanes — and only lightly prickled, unlike most brambles. Tolerates more shade than most Rubus but fruits best in part shade to sun, and is notably at home in consistently moist ground.
Grow journal
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