Trailing Blackberries were the Indigenous Peoples’ candy. The berries were eaten fresh or dried. This small berry, a ground cover, is often confused with the 2 blackberry species that create most of the Northwest’s underbrush today: the Evergreen and Himalayan Blackberries. These domesticates were unknow until their release in 1864 and 1885,
respectively, and took less than 50 years to become fully established in the NW. WWU’s SAM Project suggests the extinction probability is slight for Rubus ursinus, and the 2 “exotics” will most likely be here until the next glaciers, perhaps surviving along with the NW’s 5 horsetail species found in the Gardens, each predating the dinosaurs. (The 2, the Himalayan and Evergreen Blackberries have their own lesson.) After clear cutting of timber around the Farm, Sword Ferns, Salmonberries, and the exotic blackberries are the first plants to grow after spraying with herbicides (the County used Agent Orange along 300th in the 1950s). How many times we wonder, can we flood the slopes with deciduous plant poisons, starting only a few years ago, and expect the Trailing Blackberries’ species (ursinus) and other species to survive?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_ursinus
http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Rubus+ursinus
https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2054/2014/04/Himalayan-Evergreen-Blackberries-2014.pdf
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/taxon.php?Taxon=Rubus%20ursinus
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/29/491797791/the-strange-twisted-story-behind-seattles-blackberries
https://pnwplants.wsu.edu/PlantDisplay.aspx?PlantID=104
https://nwwildfoods.com/blogs/blog/little-wild-mountain-blackberry
https://kingcd.org/2023/10/27/trailing-blackberry-native-plant-spotlight/
https://depts.washington.edu/propplnt/Plants/RUUR.htmhttps://cob.org/wp-content/uploads/trailing-blackberry.pdf
https://barbarablackie.wordpress.com/plants/vaccinium-row/pacific-trailing-blackberry/
The plant’s fruit and flower colors are typically:
White flowers and Black fruit
Yellow flowers and Red fruit
Orange flowers and Blue fruit
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