Black raspberry: Encyclopedia - Black raspberry

Black raspberry

The Black Raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) is a species of Rubus native to eastern North America.

It is a deciduous shrub growing to 2-3 m tall, with thorny shoots. The leaves are pinnate, with five leaflets on leaves strong-growing stems in their first year, and three leaflets on leaves on flowering branchlets.

It is closely related to, but not the same as, the European Red Raspberry (Rubus idaeus), sharing the distinctively white underside of the leaves and fruit that readily detatches from the carpel, but differing in the ripe fruit being black, and in the stems being more thorny. The black fruit makes them look much like Blackberries, though this is only superficial, with the taste being more like Red Raspberries. In much of the Mid-Atlantic United States, Black Raspberries are simply called Blackberries, even though they are not.

The species has been used in the breeding of many Rubus hybrids.

Whitebark Raspberry (Rubus leucodermis), very closely related to Black Raspberry, grows on the American Pacific coast from Canada to Mexico. Rubus leucodermis is also called the Black Cap Raspberry (or just Blackcap) in the western US. Both species have high contents of Anthocyanines and Ellagic acid.

Black Raspberry - watercolor 1893

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Black raspberry", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki