Himalayan Blackberries

Today I took Henry out to pick our first blackberries of the season.  They basically blanket the city of Seattle in an undifferentiated thicket of thorns and drive over a smorgasboard of our native berries, but what the heck, come late summer they explode with big black fruits.  They taste sweet when they get old and saggy, but now they're still young and tart, so we picked a pint in the bramble behind our apartment building and made a jar of jam from them.  Henry has scratches all over his shoulders from the thorns.  I put him in overalls to protect him, but it was hot so I let him wear a sleeveless shirt.  He hung off my left side in the baby-carrier, eating every third berry I plucked, and he wasn't shy about letting me know when a berry cane reached over and gave him a love-tap.  He condenses the phrase "Yowza Dad, you're doing it wrong!" into a simple "Ahhhghhh!"  Its a lot easier for me to understand, so I appreciate it.  Jordan wonders what the doctor will say about the scrapes at his checkup tomorrow.  I say little boys get scratches: it's what they do.

        

Himalayan Blackberry 

Rubus armeniacus 

Rosaceae family

Bred for fruit production in Armenia (and not central Asia as the common name implies), this invasive weed was introduced to the US in 1885.  It now runs feral in twenty-five states and a couple provinces.  It packs a one-two-three punch for survival.  One, it has sharp thorns to keep away predators, two, wide leaves to shade out competitors (Douglas Fir and Western White Pine here in the Puget Sound region, among others), and three it can reproduce both through seeds which the birds eat, and by driving one of its canes back into the soil and sending out runners from there.  

I've worked on crews trying to eliminate blackberries from watersheds by digging out their massive root balls, sheet mulching over and replanting, and it seems to me... get used to the blackberries.  It's a ton of work requiring a bunch of people to clear even a small area, then along comes a sparrow and plop! another blackberry bush.  And don't let those goat buffs tell you grazing is the answer.  The goats munch the stems down and then they grow back like a fertalized lawn.  Better to stop complaining about the blackberries and just eat em.   

--Tim 8/8/11