This week for Flora and Fauna Friday our secret ingredient is a mean, tart, tangle of a plant: the Blackberries of genus Rubus.
Blackberries are a diverse genus of perennial vine-like shrubs that belong to the Rose family, Rosaceae. Here on Edisto we have four common species, two very common and two not as common. Sawtooth Blackbery (Rubus argutus) and Southern Dewberry (R. trivalis) are in the common camp. Sand Blackberry (R. cuneifolius) and Northern Dewberry (R. flagellaris) are in the latter. All share great similarity but differ in the details. Sawtooth Blackberry is tall and fierce with great streams of corrugated, serrated stems that swallow up wood lines. Southern Dewberry is sprawling and electric with long ribbons of ruby-red stems that snake their way through field and forest, enveloped in full by a halo of the finest prickles to guard against even the tiniest of attacks. Northern Dewberry is much the same but less red with anger; its thin green stems wind along the woods armed with a sparring set of spines. Sand Blackberry is sparse and short; its stem stiff over sandy barrens with waxed lime leaves upholstered below by ashen suede. Southern Dewberry is the common species you’ll see worming through lawns and woods. Sawtooth Blackberry prefers to build thickets along fields. Sand Blackberry is best seen in sand barrens and pine savannas where fire is prominent and Northern Blackberry in forest openings less prone to combustion.
Just like Roses, Blackberries form a tangled mess of vines and limbs that smother and stab the world around them. Great arches and chains of barbs and hooks that instruct an unforgettable lecture to those who boldly march into their iron maiden embrace. Blackberries detest trespass and vandalism. They advertise that innocuously with an armory of prickles, needle sharp protrusions across the full sum of their surface. The only places they’re approachable are their at flowers and their fruits. Blackberries bloom through March and April. Their flowers are white and bushy, with five petals as white and delicate as tissue paper affixed below a burst of brush-like anthers. Each flower an inch across and discrete on its own stem. Blackberries are a special favorite of honey bees, as their prolific pollen-packed flowers are one of the first to bloom each season as the bees stir from their hives. What’s best known and most attractive about Blackberries are their black berries. (Who’d a thunk?) Blackberries are a productive and delicious fruiting plant, thanks to most vegetarians leaving its foliage be. All species have edible berries that age from green through red into a glistening black. Each berry is really a tightly packed cluster of fleshy drupelets, each with a tiny seed at their center. In my opinion, the Dewberries are the tastiest and easiest to collect. Sand Blackberry only produces few and small fruits. Sawtooth Blackberry is by far the most prolific per unit of plant but not as flavorful, and requires more of a blood sacrifice to acquire.
