Blackberry Plant Information

History

• Blackberry plants provided Europe with food and medicine for over 2,000 years in addition to blackberry hedges used as protection against thieves. Eventually, England brought evergreen blackberry plants to North America, where they were grown commercially starting in the 1920s.

Types

• The plants consist of two main types, those that grow by trailing vines and those that grow erect like a bush. Trailing blackberries are further classified as boysenberries, thornless evergreen, loganberry and young-berry plant varieties, among others.

Canes

• Blackberry plants define into the two types by their canes, which are the types of branch group a particular blackberry plant has. Trailing cane plants do not support themselves and grow along the ground or around fences or arranged trellises. Erect plants support themselves, to some degree.

Features

• First-year plants have canes that do not produce fruit, while second-year canes begin producing blackberries. Trailing varieties produce thorns on the canes, while most erect commercially grown blackberry bushes are thorn free. The blackberries themselves are a deep purple to black color.

Fun Fact

• A blackberry is not a single berry. Blackberry plants produce "drupelets," which are many single fruits that adhere to each other, creating what appears as a whole blackberry. Each drupelet contains one seed.