Rubus ursinus

What to Eat

Edible parts: Fruit, Shoots, Leaves - tea

The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked and works well in pies and preserves. It can also be dried for later use. Flavour is generally sweet but varies considerably — the best forms produce large, well-flavoured fruit, while others may be large but sour or insipid. Half-ripe fruits can be soaked in water to make a pleasant drink. Young shoots are edible raw or cooked like asparagus, harvested in spring as they emerge from the soil while still tender. A tea can be brewed from fresh or dried leaves, and young shoots can also be used to make tea, usually combined with shoots of other Rubus species.

Dangerous Lookalikes

This plant can be confused with the following toxic species. Always verify identification carefully before consuming any wild plant.

DEADLY

Red Baneberry

Actaea rubra

SAFE

California blackberry

Rubus ursinus

Red Baneberry: Short herbaceous plant (no thorns), berries on thick red stems, each berry has a single seed, compound sharply-toothed leaves.

California 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. It suits hardiness zones 7-9. In Hobart Botanical gardens.

Australia, Canada, Mexico, North America*, Tasmania, USA,

How to Identify

An evergreen shrub. It can be upright or lie along the ground. It can be a climber. It grows 50-90 cm high and spreads 0.9-3 m wide. The leaves have 3-5 leaflets. The are hairy above and like felt and white underneath. The male and female flowers are on separate plants. The flowers are white. The fruit is black and hairy.

How to Grow

Easily grown in a good well-drained loamy soil in sun or semi-shade. This species is the parent of many hybrid cultivated forms, including the loganberry and the primus berry. Some botanists include the cultivated loganberry (treated here as a separate species, R. loganobaccus) under this species. 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. 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 sown after February should be stratified for one month at 3°C; sow as early as possible in the year. Prick out seedlings when large enough to handle, grow on in a cold frame, and plant into permanent positions in late spring of the following year. Tip layering in July; plant out in autumn. Division in early spring.

Medicinal Uses

The dried bark of the root is astringent and has been used to treat diarrhoea and dysentery, as has a decoction of the roots. The roots have also been used as a disinfectant wash on infected sores. Eating fresh fruit has been a traditional remedy for diarrhoea. A decoction of the entire vine treats stomach complaints, diarrhoea, and general nausea, while a decoction of the vines and roots together has been used for vomiting and spitting of blood.

Other Uses

A purple to dull blue dye is obtained from the fruit.

Rubus ursinus is a North American species of blackberry or dewberry, known by the common names California blackberry, California dewberry, Douglas berry, Pacific blackberry, Pacific dewberry and trailing blackberry.

Notes

There are about 250 Rubus species.

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