Several sources state that there exists a considerable diversity of blackberry brambles in northwestern Europe: Wildlife of Britain (ISBN 978-1-4053-2932-3), p. 366: “… this species is divided by some botanists into hundreds of microspecies, but they all look very similar.” Food for Free (ISBN 978…

The thing with members of the European Blackberry Complex is that they set seed apomicticly (without sex). Therefore, a population derived from seeds and covering a large area may be a single clone. It looks like a species because it’s growing alongside another clone that differs from it a little …

There is a project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/rubus-brambles-of-britain-and-ireland-uk that may help with ID’s. They also give some guidance on the key parts to photograph to aid identification. Sadly there are no other linked resources from the project and not many active Identifications. …

I find this website very helpful for attempting blackberry ID: https://www.jnecology.uk/rubus/

I think that anyone should start relying on the help of a batologist experienced with the bramble flora of a specific area/country. Otherwise it is extremely complicated to get into this genus.

[image] sedgequeen: These all do have sex occasionally and produce seed from these unions. If the parents were different clones, these offspring are a little different from both – they are hybrids – and they can form a new clone that spread over a large area while retaining their traits, their d…

Sorry. I was unclear. I meant, SUPERFICIALLY those clones look like species. Same can be true for cultivars. But actually, they’re not good species, in my opinion, though lots of them have names.

Brambles of the British Isles by ES Edees and A Newton was published by the Ray Society in 1999. The book is out of print but there is a version on cd produced by Pisces Conservation, £45 from NHBS. Unless you are going to devote a large part of your natural history time to brambles, I wouldn’t get …

[image] sedgequeen: The thing with members of the European Blackberry Complex is that they set seed apomicticly (without sex). Except for Rubus ulmifolius, which does - it can then hybridise with the apomictic ones, just in case the group wasn’t annoying enough. For the UK at least there ar…

Since blackberries are now fruiting I’ve noticed some variation in the fruits as well - there are some which fit just about every expectation for dewberries, except the fruits are lustrous like “normal” blackberries are, rather than covered in the glaucous, waxy bloom I’d been conditioned to expect …

Distinguishing between European blackberry species

Nature Talk

jasonhernandez74 July 13, 2024, 10:04pm 2

If we were discussing tomatoes, those would be cultivar-level differences. Why should wild plants be assumed to be uniform when they are capable of so much variation once cultivated?

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Distinguishing between European blackberry species

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