What an emphatic creature! Even though a familiar sight, nevertheless its excesses are astonishing : so many branches, a plethora of leaves, short spikes all over in defense and, not too forget, the blackberries, which if at their ripe stage, are mouthwatering delicious.
The plant blooms in late spring and early summer. The diameter of a flower is about 2-3 cm, it has five pale pink or white petals. The flowers have several stamens. After the petals fall off, the fruit develops as an aggregate of drupelets, green at first and that turn red to black as they ripen.
About the purple to black color they assume upon ripening: it is due toanthocyanin pigments, among which cyanidin 3-glucoside is predominant. They can be turned into dyes, whether in a paint that children may use in playful watercolors or as a coloring their mothers might apply to turn a piece of fabric or yarn into a colorful although rather pale purple. As dyes,
blackberries are also used to color various foods or drinks such as, for instance, the thus named Blackberry Gin.
Blackberries are highly visible which, not only attracts children and hikers but also birds that will disseminate the seeds: each tiny drupelet bears one, which then may give rise to another bush at a distance from the original one. As an example, migrant birds feed on blackberries in Southern Spain.
Five species remove the bulk of seeds: the black-capped warbler Sylvia atricapilla, the redbreast robin Erithacus rubicula, the garden warbler Sylvia borin and the great-horned warbler Sylvia melanocephala and, of course, the blackbird, Turdus merula.
But back to other blackberry clients, children and hikers. Are they at
some risk for picking and eating blackberries? Not at all, these berries are
highly beneficial food-wise and health-wise.
Food-wise: the sweet taste comes from sugars, fructose and glucose predominantly. Which explains products from blackberries, juice and jam predominantly. Health-wise: present in the berry are anthocyanins with anti-oxidant benefits together with flavonoids having anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory effects. An anthocyanin extract present in blackberry juice protects against heart disease. These small berries are also rich in vitamin C
and potassium, both of which are beneficial to the cardiovascular system.
Rubus fruticosus has been an invasive plant present in many parts of the world — due presumably to migrant birds and humans! Consider for instance the Western United States, where the invasion had previously been thought to consist of a single asexual lineage. The most common clone was genetically identical to the microspecies Rubus armeniacus from the native range of Germany, while the second clone was identical to the microspecies Rubus anglocandicans in the invaded range of Australia and closely related to samples from the native ranges of England and Serbia. A third distinct clone was identified in a collection from the exotic range of Chile. The genus has a likely North American origin, with fossils known from the Eocene Age.
Rubus expanded into Eurasia, South America, and Oceania during the Miocene.
Blackberries and the shrubs carrying them are a familiar sight to many people, since their spread is worldwide. To such an extant, that the genus Rubus consists of about 700 species. Accordingly, the berries have a number of different names, depending on the country. In mine, France, they are known as mûres. This goes back to the thirteenth century, blackberries in French bear the same name as fruits from the mulberry tree — they are a little bit look-alikes. The name of the fruit in Hungarian is fekete szeder, the epithet fekete means black, while szeder, of unknown origin, is the name for bot the bush and the fruit.
All in all, an impressive plant.7