Now that we're getting a little more rain up here in the holler, I can usually count on finding a blackberry or two ripe enough to eat when my dos and cats and I do our holler walks. A couple of days ago I found several:
Probably Rubus fruticosus, the common blackberry, 6 July 2011 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
Ever since I ate these I've been thinking about the difference between blackberries -- which I've been assuming these are -- and black raspberries. If you look at the berry that's kind of centered among four others, pretty much at the base of my middle finger in the photo, you can see that the berry's stem remained with the berry when I picked it, which is typical of blackberries. Black raspberries will have a hole at that spot because they separate from their stem when you pull them off the plant.
Both berries are members of the Rose family (Rosaceae) and of the genus Rubus, which has hundreds of different species within it. Blackberry is the name given to the aggregate fruits -- which are not true berries -- of several different species in the genus Rubus.
Blackberries can have a bit of a sour taste, but most of these in the photo were quite sweet compared to the first ones I found this year.
There are many blackberry brambles in the area where I found these. They are probably one of the plants that draw deer into the holler to eat the blackberry leaves.