Rubus frondosus
(Torr.) Bigelow
Yankee blackberry, Leafy flowered blackberry
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What to Eat
Edible parts: Fruit
The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. Berries have also traditionally been cooked, shaped into small cakes, and dried for winter use.
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.
Yankee blackberry: Thorny woody canes (brambles), aggregate berry made of many drupelets, berries pull easily from receptacle.
Where to Find It
It is a temperate plant.
North America, USA,
How to Identify
Deciduous shrub growing to 0.8 m tall. Hardy to UK zone 5. Flowers in June. Hermaphrodite and self-fertile with apomictic reproduction. Accepts light sandy, medium loamy, and heavy clay soils with good drainage. Tolerates mildly acid, neutral, or mildly alkaline pH. Grows in semi-shade or full sun in dry or moist soil.
How to Grow
Easily grown in a good well-drained loamy soil in sun or semi-shade. Cultivated for its edible fruit in N. America. This species is a blackberry with biennial stems, it produces a number of new stems each year from the perennial rootstock, these stems fruit in their second year and then die. The plant produces apomictic flowers, these produce fruit and viable seed without fertilization, each seedling is a genetic copy of the parent. Plants in this genus are notably susceptible to honey fungus.
Propagation: Seed requires stratification and is best sown in early autumn in a cold frame. Stored seed needs one month stratification at about 3°c and should be sown as early in the year as possible. Prick out seedlings when large enough to handle and grow on in a cold frame, then plant out into permanent positions in late spring of the following year. Cuttings of half-ripe wood can be taken in July/August in a frame. Tip layering in July, planting out in autumn. Division can be done in early spring or just before leaf-fall in autumn.
Medicinal Uses
A decoction of the root has been used as an emmenagogue to restore menstrual flow and as a pectoral remedy to treat lung problems.
Other Uses
A purple to dull blue dye is obtained from the fruit.
Wikipedia
Source ↗Rubus frondosus is a North American species of blackberry in the genus Rubus, a member of the rose family. It has been found in Ontario and in the eastern and central United States from Maine south to Georgia and west as far as Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Minnesota.
Other Information
It is cultivated.
Notes
There are about 250 Rubus species.
Names & Synonyms
References (6)
- Beckstrom-Sternberg, Stephen M., and James A. Duke. "The Foodplant Database." http://probe.nalusda.gov:8300/cgi-bin/browse/foodplantdb.(ACEDB version 4.0 - data version July 1994)
- Fl. boston. ed. 2:199. 1824 Jun
- Kermath, B. M., et al, 2014, Food Plants in the Americas: A survey of the domesticated, cultivated and wild plants used for Human food in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. On line draft. p 760
- Mansfield's Encyclopedia of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops p 430
- Moerman, D. F., 2010, Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press. p 488
- Plants for a Future database, The Field, Penpol, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL22 0NG, UK. http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/
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