Rubus subornatus
Focke
(c) niveum, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
Field Museum of Natural History - Botany Department
Field Museum of Natural History - Botany Department
What to Eat
Edible parts: Fruit
The red fruits are eaten fresh.
Dangerous Lookalikes
This plant can be confused with the following toxic species. Always verify identification carefully before consuming any wild plant.
Red Baneberry: Short herbaceous plant (no thorns), berries on thick red stems, each berry has a single seed, compound sharply-toothed leaves.
Rubus subornatus: Thorny woody canes (brambles), aggregate berry made of many drupelets, berries pull easily from receptacle.
Where to Find It
It is a temperate plant. It grows in forest ravines between 2,700-4,000 m above sea level. In Sichuan and Yunnan.
Asia, China, Myanmar, SE Asia, Tibet,
How to Identify
A shrub. It grows 1-3 m tall It has slender prickles. The leaves have leaflets along the stalk and one at the end. There are usually 3 leaflets. The leaflets are oval and 4-8 cm long by 3-6 cm wide. They are hairy. There are 6-10 flowers in a group at the ends of the branches. The flowers can occur singly or as a few in the axils of the leaves. The flowers are 2-3 cm across. The fruit are aggregate and red.
Production
In China plants flower in May and June and fruit in August to September.
References (4)
- Boesi, A., 2014, Traditional knowledge of wild food plants in a few Tibetan communities. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 10:75
- Cheng, Z., et al, 2022, Ethnobotanical study on wild edible plants used by Dulong people in northwestern Yunnan, China. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2022) 18:3
- Flora of China @ efloras.org Volume 9
- Zhang, L., et al, 2016, Ethnobotanical study of traditional edible plants used by the Naxi people during droughts. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. 12:39
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