Photo: Alex Abair — CC BY 4.0 · source
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.
Sweet-tart, blackberry-like; earliest of the group, worth growing for season extension.
- Hardiness
- Zone 6–9
- Habit
- Groundcover
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- May–June — the earliest bramble crop
- Mature size
- Trailing semi-evergreen groundcover 20–40 cm tall, the bristly canes running 1–3 m and tip-rooting
- Light
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Warm temperate, sandy ground
- Native range
- Native to the southeastern United States, from Virginia south to Florida and west to Texas, on stream banks, roadsides, thickets and old fields, generally on dry sandy soils.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Vigorous trailing growth — canes can extend well over a meter in a season and root at the tip to start new plants.
- Spacing
- 120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Compound leaves with 3–5 coarsely toothed, broadly lanceolate leaflets on thin, bristly, recurved-prickled trailing canes — a low sprawling vine rather than an upright shrub.
- Root system
- Roots at the cane tips wherever they touch soil — tip-layering is its main means of natural increase — in addition to some spread from the crown.
- Fruit description
- A blackberry-type aggregate fruit about 3 cm long, glossy black when ripe, very juicy and sweet with good flavor — among the better-tasting of the trailing dewberries.
- Propagation
- By tip-layering in July — its natural means of spread — plus division of rooted cane tips, semi-ripe cuttings in July–August, or stratified seed sown in 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.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Naturally suited to lean, dry, sandy ground, so established plants need little supplemental feeding; a light spring mulch of compost is usually enough, and overly rich, wet soil tends to encourage disease more than it improves cropping.
How it spreads. A true trailing dewberry — thin, sprawling canes run along the ground and root wherever the tip touches soil, rather than growing as an upright cane like a raspberry or erect blackberry; this tip-rooting lets it form dense low thickets.
Growing tips. Blooms earlier than almost any other wild bramble — solitary flowers open March–April and fruit can ripen by May, weeks ahead of upright blackberries, making it useful for season extension. Canes are low and bristly with small recurved prickles and reddish glandular bristles; best grown in full sun on a low trellis, or simply allowed to trail as groundcover.
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