Bramble Fruits

For me, the word bramble evokes images from fairy tale stories of gnomes, giants, and hidden cottages. But bramble fruits can be a delicious addition to your landscape, producing abundant fruit with minimal effort for decades.

Rubus 'Thornless Youngberry', Australia (Nadiatalent) CC BY-SA 4.0

What are bramble fruits?

You might be surprised to learn that bramble fruits are not berries, botanically speaking. Instead, they are aggregates of druplets that grow on woody canes. Most of them feature sharp prickles, like those found on roses.

All bramble fruits are members of the Rubus genus. Blackberries and raspberries are common bramble fruits, but there are other brambles you might grow. Other members of this clan include bristleberries, dewberries, salmonberries, wineberries, and youngberries, as well as hybrids such as boysenberries, loganberries, marionberries, nessberries, and tayberries. Researchers are still debating how to classify these prolific fruit-producers, but we can leave the molecular science to them while we enjoy freshly picked fruit from our yard.

Dewberry cane in flower (Fritzflohrreynolds) CC BY-SA 3.0

How to grow bramble fruits

Brambles have perennial roots and crowns that grow new canes each year. Most brambles are biennial hermaphrodites. This means they are self-pollinating and produce fruit the second year of each cane’s life.

​Most bramble root systems are found in the top 18 inches of soil, but some varieties can grow six feet deep. You can periodically use a shovel around your brambles to sever underground runners. New green canes are called primocanes. In winter, they turn brown and go dormant. In spring, these second-year canes are called floricanes. Flowers and fruit are only produced on floricanes, so don’t prune them out. Once fruit set has occurred, canes should be allowed to die back before being removed at the end of the growing season.

​You should know that brambles have a strong tendency to spread. They do require effort to keep them contained, but the fruit makes that effort well worth it in my opinion. You can also grow them in containers, but those containers must be at least two feet deep and as wide as possible.

Raspberry primocanes and floricanes (OSU) CC BY-SA 2.0

Those growth characteristics make it easy to start new brambles from old canes. Simply lay the cane on some moist soil, and roots will emerge. Most brambles prefer morning sun and protection from scorching afternoon sunlight. Generally speaking, bramble fruits grow best in USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 4 through 9.

The spreading growth habits of most brambles have made them popular throughout human history in pleaching and coppicing. Coppicing is a simple practice of repeatedly cutting woody plants close to the ground to acquire thin, straight, flexible wood for basket-making and other applications. Pleaching refers to weaving dead branches among living branches to create a hedge or barrier. It also describes the method by which talented tree trainers create amazing works of art by bending and shaping living trees and shrubs. Brambles have also been used as defensive plants to keep enemies and potential thieves at bay with those sharp prickles.

Despite how quickly brambles grow and how productive they can be, they do face some problems in terms of pests and diseases.

Pests and diseases of bramble fruits

These plants are rugged, but they are susceptible to the following garden pests:

• Aphids
• Cutworms
• Japanese beetles
• Raspberry crown borers
• Raspberry fruitworms
• Raspberry horntails
• Spider mites
• Stem borers
• Strawberry bud weevils
• Tarnished plant bugs

Diseases to watch for in your bramble patch include the following:

• Anthracnose
• Cane blight
• Septoria leaf spot
• Sooty blotch and flyspeck
• Spur blight
• White druplets
• Yellow rust

Many of these pests and diseases can be prevented by properly spacing plants, mulching around canes without touching them, regularly inspecting the canes for signs of problems, and applying horticultural oils during the delayed dormant period.

While bramble fruits pose some challenges, they can provide decades of fresh summer fruit and year-round supplies of delicious jams, jellies, and gifts from your garden.