Photo: Walter Siegmund (talk) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 3 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
A true red raspberry — sweet-tart, softer and smaller than the European; excellent fresh. Frequently treated as R. idaeus subsp. strigosus.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–7
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- July–Aug
- Mature size
- Suckering cane 1–2 m; containerable
- Light
- Full sun; tolerates partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate to boreal
- Native range
- Native across much of North America, from Newfoundland west to Alaska and south to Pennsylvania, Indiana, Iowa, and Arizona, with disjunct populations in the mountains of Virginia/West Virginia and western North Carolina/eastern Tennessee. Grows in thickets, clearings, and woodland borders, and is especially quick to colonize after fire or other disturbance.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 1–2 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium growth rate — canes typically reach 3–9 ft tall and wide in a season, forming an erect, spreading thicket.
- Spacing
- 90 cm (35 in) apart — about 1.2 per m² (1.1 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Pinnately compound leaves with 3–5 leaflets, doubly serrate margins, and a pleated texture; undersides are pale and downy-gray. Canes carry sharp prickles and glandular hairs along their length.
- Root system
- Perennial roots and crown with biennial canes; spreads by vigorous root suckering that readily forms thickets, especially on disturbed ground.
- Fruit description
- A true raspberry — the aggregate of small drupelets holds together in a hollow cone that separates cleanly from the receptacle when picked. Red to orange-red, under 1 in across, sweet-tart — softer and smaller than the cultivated European red raspberry.
- Propagation
- Propagated by division and stem/root cuttings, and by digging rooted suckers; tip layering also succeeds as in other raspberries. Seedlings are variable, so named selections are increased vegetatively.
- 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. Follows general red-raspberry feeding guidance — moderate nitrogen applied in early spring to support primocane growth. Tolerant of a wide range of acidic soils and, unusually for the genus, tolerates occasionally wet ground as well as dry rocky sites.
How it spreads. Spreads by vigorous root suckering, sending up new canes from a spreading root system to form dense thickets — the typical raspberry pattern of colonization, reinforced here by its habit of moving quickly into disturbed or burned ground.
Growing tips. Fruits on floricanes (second-year canes), the same biennial cane cycle as R. idaeus. Canes are notably bristly — covered in sharp prickles and glandular hairs, more so than the smoother-caned European red raspberry. Grows in full sun to partial shade and tolerates a wider range of soil moisture than most brambles. Susceptible to anthracnose, botrytis, and root rot, plus cane and crown borers; like red raspberry generally, it is resistant to the orange rust that afflicts black raspberries and blackberries.
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