"brambles" news and stories

Brambles are in season! What are brambles? Raspberries, blackberries, dewberries, swampberries, boysenberries, cloudberries, black caps, and any other wonderful members of the rose family that produce an aggregate berry. A recent trip to Kingston Point Park in Kingston, NY, had us eating almost everything we could pick.

The berries that grew at the point were what the locals here commonly call black caps. These are wild black raspberries. They are usually found on upright, thorny, raspberry canes, and look like a slightly smaller version of the commercial variety. The taste is excellent.

Amy and Alec found a nice stand of wild red raspberries, looking much like commercial ones, and a few bushes of the odd, maple-leafed, purple-flowering-raspberry near Esopus, NY. These are also upright plants and easy to locate. You can spot them well in advance in the Spring with their small, white, flowers. The purple flowering raspberry has a very showy rose-like purple flower.

Blackberries, dewberries, and swampberries, grow along runners tangled in the weeds. These berries have larger aggregrate parts than the raspberry-like fruits, just like store-bought blackberries.