RUBUS, VARIOUS SPECIES
MANY SPECIES of wild brambles of the Rubus genus are found in pockets around the country, but the ones that bear the fruits we think of as blackberries are native to the northern temperate regions from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. Imported blackberries have escaped to the wild in northern California and the Pacific Northwest, where they’ve lent their fine flavor to many cultivated varieties. Cultivated berries are grown throughout the country, and are the kinds most frequently found in farmers’ markets, roadside stands, organic food stores, and as frozen organic blackberries, which
are available year around.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
Blackberries—whether organic or conventional—are subject to rots and mildews in wet weather. Organic growers plant varieties resistant to orange rust, a contagious disease that is otherwise coped with by rooting out infected plants.
NUTRITION
Five ounces of blackberries give us 50 percent of our daily need for vitamin C and 30 percent of fiber. They also have good stores of vitamin K as well as trace elements such as manganese, magnesium, potassium, and copper.
TYPES
Wild Eastern blackberries, called highbush blackberries (Rubus allegheniensis), grow in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states west to Wis-consin and as far south as Missouri east to North Carolina. The bushes produce small, seedy, but exquisitely flavored berries when ripe.
Dewberries (Rubus trivialis) are a trailing form of wild blackberry native to the same area as the highbush blackberry. I first discovered dewberries when I was nine or ten years old, shortly after my family moved to the Poconos. One of my playmates, who had grown up there, pointed them out to me. The berries looked like any other blackberry but grew along stems that nestled down among the moss and wild plants. I found them to be the sweetest blackberries of all.
Now I live in California, where wild Himalayan blackberries (Rubus procerus) grow along streams and where there’s irrigation, becoming huge, thick, tangled, pestiferous masses of long canes—practically impassable except perhaps to a grizzly bear. Blackberry pickers in Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino counties pick the berries that proliferate on the outside of the patches, so there’s little need to reach deeply into the thorny middle. These western berries are rich and flavorful. Just about everyone looks forward to blackberry season, and most of the berries are wild picked.
In the Pacific Northwest, there is also a wild trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus) similar to the eastern dewberry, supposedly of exquisite flavor, although I’ve not tasted one. But I have tasted the Marion blackberry, a cultivated variety of the wild species, and I can attest to its remarkable and
aromatic blackberry flavor.
BOYSENBERRY AND LOGANBERRY
Boy-senberries (or Boysen berries) are named after Ralph Boysen, who discovered them growing on his farm in southern California. They’re a cross between a red raspberry and a blackberry, with a purplish color and flavor components of both. The Boysenberry was the basis for the initial development of the Knott’s Berry Farm fruit and entertainment complex near Los Angeles. Another delicious crossbreed is the Logan, sometimes called Loganberry, which makes superb jams, jellies, preserves, and pies. It’s also a cross between a red raspberry and the wild trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus), which gives it a distinctive and tart flavor. Loganberries were planted on thousands of acres in the west from the late 1800s to the mid-20th century and accounted for millions of dollars of sales but, unfortunately, have fallen out of favor with large commercial growers. Today less than 100 acres are planted with loganberries in Oregon.
Some new varieties of commercial blackberries produce larger berries, greater yields, and ship better, but the standard of quality is still the small-berried wild blackberry with its concentrated, wine-like flavor.
SEASONALITY
Blackberries ripen in most parts of the country in late July, with some varieties continuing to produce berries through September, though most are finished bearing by mid-September.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
If the berries aren’t dead ripe, they’ll be sour instead of sweet and lack the full dusky-brambly flavor of the ripe fruit.
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