Wild blackberries and....

The wild blackberries are ripe. When I say wild blackberries I am referring to the small native blackberries or dewberries (Rubus ursinus). The larger Himalaya (Rubus discolor) or evergreen (Rubus laciniatus) blackberries bloom and ripen later than the native berries. I have also heard these species referred to as wild blackberries but they are non native species that have escaped cultivation. To some, these escaped domestic blackberries are a weedy curse that can swallow buildings in a thorny green mass. Others don’t see it that way or are ambivalent on the subject. I fall into the ambivalent category with a heavy leaning toward the curse perspective. From now on, I will refer to the small native blackberries as dewberries to save confusion.

The small vines of dewberries grow thick under the right conditions but don’t tend to take over. They are highly prized by many people. These small, tart berries make very good jam but I prefer them in pies and cobbler. When mixed with sweetener you get an excellent sweet and sour flavor.

Dewberries can be tricky to find for a number of reasons. I once heard a person talking on the radio about a book they had just written about foraging in the Pacific Northwest forests and this person was at a loss when asked where to find the little native blackberries. They were familiar with the vines but had never seen them grow in very large quantities.

For starters, dewberries, like most of our native berries survive quite well in the shade of a forest but they produce few, if any, berries under these conditions. Most berries in the Pacific Northwest produce best in open sunlight. So the best place to look for them if you want to pick berries is not in the forest but in open areas like burns, road edges, logging units and other openings in the forest. This is hardly a secret to veteran berry pickers and it wasn’t a secret to Native Americans who burned areas to increase berry crops, though most of the areas that I am aware of that were burned for berries where at higher elevations for blueberries. When looking for a dewberry patch nowadays one must be careful that the area has not been recently sprayed with herbicide.

Another problem a novice dewberry picker might encounter is that not all vines will produce berries. Dewberries are dioecious. This means that their vines either have all male flowers (staminate) or all female flowers (pistillate). Only the female flowers will produce fruit, assuming that they have been pollinated by the male flowers.

Before I ever knew about dewberries being dioecious, I was still successful in finding them. I was always on the lookout for big patches of vines in likely places. After the flowers withered, I would look to see if there were green berries or not and then I would know. Another quick way to find bearing vines when dewberries are starting to ripen, is to look for them early enough that there are still a lot of red berries on the vines. These stand out much better than fully ripe berries so you can see them more easily. Once you have found a good patch by this method, you can go back in a few days or a week when more berries are ripe.

On a side note, Himalaya and evergreen blackberries have perfect flowers, meaning all of their flowers have both male and female parts. Therefore, any of these vines that you see will have berries, assuming conditions are right for producing berries.

You will rarely find permanent patches of dewberries. As the forest grows back, the vines quit producing as they are shaded out. It usually takes about ten years for the forest to shade out a dewberry patch.

I have been able to get out on one berry picking expedition and hope to make a few more before the season is over. The end of dewberry season roughly coincides with Swainson thrush season. The first couple of weeks you hear Swainson’s thrushes all over in the surrounding woods in the morning or evening but, by the time you are after the last few berries, the thrushes are gone.  

Female or pistillate dewberry (Rubus ursinus) flower. All of the small hairlike structures are pistils which are the means to get pollen into the ovaries of the flower. 

Male or staminate dewberry flowers. The hairlike structures on these flowers are stamens which produce pollen. It is hard to tell the difference between male and female dewberry plants without looking closely. As I stated in the text above, it is often easier just to look for the berries. The orange flowers in this photo are trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliosa). 

This is one of my dewberry patches, a logging unit on private timber land.  This is also where I got my deer last year. Certain species like deer and most of our berries, native and non native, become more abundant when there are openings in the forest. There is increased forage for deer and other animals that eat berries have an increased food supply. Many of these species also need forested habitats as well.

Dewberries growing under the shade of a heavy forest canopy. These vines are healthy and green and doing quite well but they are sparse and not showing robust growth. They will not flower or bear fruit. I just took this photo this morning and had to use a flash so the light looks a little funny.  

Dewberry patch in open sunlight of logging unit. It is hard to tell from this photo but almost all of the lower growing green vegetation is dewberry vines and most of these have berries. 

Close up of dewberries from previous photo. Note how the red ones stand out a little more than the fully ripe black ones. The small Douglas-fir seedling in the photo has been planted by the timber company that logged this area. 

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These berries are good sized for dewberries-not the largest I've ever encountered but definitely not the smallest. I don't know exactly what makes berries grow bigger in some areas. It could have something to do with soil nutrients. Dewberries like nitrogen medium soils so a little too much nitrogen or not quite enough may have an effect. I have noticed that bigger berries tend to be in a little shadier spots though these spots still get plenty of direct light. They seem to get bigger in moister areas too. Genetics might be partly responsible for size differences in berries. 

These are not dewberries. They are black caps or black raspberries (Rubus leucodermis). The flavor of these berries is similar to dewberries, maybe a little sweeter and muskier. They often grow in the same areas as dewberries though rarely as thick. I remember the first time I ran across these picking berries as a kid and asking my dad if they were okay.  He said yes so ever since I have picked any ripe ones I run across and add them to the berry pail. 

Dewberries growing on brush. These berries are still reddish colored but they are fully ripe. You can tell if they are ripe or not if some of them are mushy, in other words, overripe. If some are mushy but still red, then probably the whole vine is that way. I have noticed that berries tend to be in this condition in areas that get a lot of sun. These berries also tend to ripen more quickly than areas that get more shade during the day. 

More berries growing over a stump. 

The result of a little more than an hour and a half of picking. This came out to be 12 cups of berries. If you look closely, you will see some black caps mixed in with the dewberries. These berries are probably destined to become freezer jam. As I stated in the text, I prefer pies but jam is good too. There is a good berry crop this year so hopefully I will be able to get out a few more times. These berries also freeze well. I have made some very good pies from berries that have been in the freezer for several years. 

Here is the and...... from the title of this post. The final addition to the herd for the year. I knew Dreadlocks (Miss "D") was due soon but the cows were at the stump farm and I was pretty busy with hay and was out of town for work for almost a week. So the other night I made it a point to find her and, lo and behold, she'd had her calf, a heifer. The swarms of flies are typical for this time of year. Each cow has their own personal cloud of flies that follows them everywhere.