BERRY FRUITS

In non-technical usage, berry means any small fruit that can be eaten whole and lacks objectionable seeds. The bramble fruits, compound fruits of genus Rabus (blackberries), are some of the most popular pseudo-berries.

Blackberry

There are many species and hybrids, such as dewberry and loganberry.

w The blackberry is a widespread and well known shrub; a bramble fruit (genus Rubus, family Rosaceous) growing to 3 m (10 ft) and producing a soft-bodied fruit popular for use in desserts, jams and sometimes wine. Several Rubus species are also known as blackberry and since the species are easily hybridize; there are many cultivars with more than one species in their ancestry.

w Marionberry is a berry cross between Chehalem and Olallieberry blackberries. It is said to "capture the best attributes of both berries and also yields an aromatic bouquet and an intense blackberry flavor Olallieberry (sometimes spelled Olallieberry) in turn is a cross between the loganberry and youngberry.

w The blackberry has a scrambling habit to dense arching stems carrying short curved have very sharp spines, the branches rooting from the node tip when they reach the ground. It is a best ways of pervasive, growing at fast daily rates in woods, scrub, hillsides and hedgerows, colonizing the large areas in a relatively short time. It will tolerate poor soil, and is an early colonizer of wasteland and building sites. It has palmate leaves of three to five leaflets with flowers of white or pink appearing from May to August, ripening to a black or dark purple fruit, the "blackberry".

w The blackberry is also another fruit of the blackberry plant. In proper botanical language, it is actually not a berry at all, but instead an aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets.

Raspberry

w The Raspberry or otherwise Red Raspberry, (Rubus Idaeus) is a plant that produces a tart, sweet, red composite fruit (not a true berry) in late summer or the early autumn. The fruit is similar to that of blackberry, but is smaller, softer, and in a different colour. It grows typically in forest clearings or fields, particularly where ever fire or wood-cutting has produced open space for colonization by this the opportunistic colonizer of disturbed soil. As a cultivated plant, it is very easy to grow and has a tendency to spread unless cut back. Raspberry is sometimes eaten by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Emperor Moth and Peach Blossom.

w There are two types are commercially available: the wild-type summer bearing, that has produces an abundance of fruit on second-year canes within a relatively short period in the midsummer, and double- or "ever"- bearing plants, which also bear a few of fruit on first-year canes in the autumn, as well as the summer crop on the second-year canes. Raspberries can be cultivated from USDA plant hardiness zones 9 to 3.

w A golden Raspberry, which is in pale yellow, has been selected by horticulturalists.

w The black raspberry, also called a blackcap, is not the same plant, being a cultivar (usually) of Rubus occidentals, a North American species. Several other non-cultivated Rubus species are also called raspberries.

Cloudberry

w The cloudberry plant grows in 10-25 cm high. Leaves alternate between having 5 and 7 soft, hand like lobes on straight, branchless stalks. After pollination, white (sometimes reddish-tipped) flowers form raspberry-sized berries. Encapsulating between 5 and 25 berries, each fruit is initially pale red, ripening into an amber colour in autumn.

w The ripe fruits are golden-yellow, soft and juicy, and are rich in Vitamin C. When eaten fresh, cloudberries have a distinctive tart taste. They are often made into jams, juices, tarts or liqueurs. In Finland the berries are eaten with "Leip? usto" (a local hard cheese) and much sugar. In Sweden, they are also used as an ice cream topping. In Canada, cloudberries are used to flavor a special beer. Canadians also use them for jam, but not on the same large scale as Scandinavians.

w Due to its high Vitamin C content, the berry is valued both by Nordic seafarers and by American Inuit as protection against scurvy. Its high benzoic acid content acts as an inbuilt natural preservative.

w In ancient Scandinavian herbal medicine, the leaves of cloudberry were used as tea to cure urinary tract infections. Cloudberry is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Emperor Moth.

Wineberry

w The wine berry (Rubus phoenicolasius), is a type of raspberry, and grows wild in the eastern part of the United States. The heart-shaped leaves grow in the groups of three and are white underneath. The canes have fine, red thorns, which appear much like red hair. The calyx (covering the fruit until it is ripe) is also red and hairy. The delicate fruits are slightly tart and ripen to a deep red in late June to early July.

w New plants are formed from the tips of existing canes touching the ground. They enjoy moist soil and grow near and within wooded areas. They are considered invasive in some areas.

w They are also called Wine raspberries and Japanese Wineberry. Despite the name, they are no more or less suited for winemaking. Wineberry is also a tree endemic to New Zealand.

w The true berries are dominated by the family Ericaceae, many of which are hardy in the subarctic.

Bilberry or Whortleberry

w Bilberry is a name given to several species of low-growing shrubs in the genus Vaccinium (family Ericaceae) that bear tasty fruits. The species most often referred to is Vaccinium myrtillus L., also known as blaeberry, whortleberry, whinberry, myrtle blueberry, and probably other names regionally.

w Bilberries are rarely cultivated but fruits are sometimes collected from wild plants growing on public lands, notably in Scandinavia and Poland. Vaccinium myrtillus fruit is called bl?r in Swedish and mustikka in Finnish; Vaccinium uliginosum fruit is odon in Swedish and juolukka in Finnish. The fruits are eaten fresh, or are usually made into jams, juices or pies. They have therapeutic uses in herbal medicine.

Blueberry

w Blueberry refers to some plants of the genus Vaccinium, which also includes cranberries, bilberries (also called blueberry), and many wild shrubs producing edible, round, blue berries (botanically false berries) with flared "crowns" at the end. The fruit are first white, then reddish-purple, and turn blue on ripening; the fruit are also called blueberries, and have a sweet taste. Blueberries are used in jellies, jams, pies, and many other snacks and delicacies.

w Blueberries are both cultivated and picked wild. In North America, the most common cultivated species is V. corymbosum, the Northern Highbush Blueberry. Hybrids of this with other Vaccinium species adapted to southern US climates are known collectively as Southern Highbush Blueberries.

w Wild blueberries, smaller and much more expensive than cultivated ones, are prized for their intense flavour and colour. The Lowbush Blueberry, V. angustifolium, is found from Newfoundland westward and southward to Michigan and West Virginia. In some areas it produces natural blueberry barrens, where it is practically the only species covering large areas. Several First Nations communities in Ontario are involved in harvesting wild blueberries.

Huckleberry

w Huckleberry is a name used in North America for several plants in two closely related genera in the family Ericaceae, Gaylussacia and Vaccinium.While some Vaccinium species, such as the Red Huckleberry, are always called huckleberries, other species may be called blueberries or huckleberries depending upon local custom. Similar Vaccinium species in Europe are called bilberries.

Barberry

w Berberis is a genus of about 450-500 species of deciduous and evergreen shrubs from 1-5 m tall with thorny shoots, native to the temperate and subtropical regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and South America. They are closely related to the genus Mahonia, which is included within Berberis by some botanists. Many are known by the vernacular name barberry.

w The genus is characterised by dimorphic shoots, with long shoots which form the structure of the plant, and short shoots only 1-2 mm long. The leaves on long shoots are non-photosynthetic, developed into three-spined thorns 3-30 mm long; the bud in the axil of each thorn-leaf then develops a short shoot with several normal, photosynthetic leaves. These leaves are 1-10 cm long, simple, and either entire, or with spiny margins. Only on young seedlings do leaves develop on the long shoots, with the adult foliage style developing after the young plant is 1-2 years old.

w The deciduous species (e.g. Berberis thunbergii, B. vulgaris) are noted for good autumn colour, the leaves turning pink or red before falling. In some evergreen species from China (e.g. B. candidula, B. verruculosa), the leaves are brilliant white beneath, making them particularly attractive.

Gooseberry

w The gooseberry is a well-known fruit-bush. Closely related species are found in northern and central Europe (Ribes grossularia) and in North America (Ribes hirtellum).

w The gooseberries are usually placed in genus Ribes, along with the closely related blackcurrants, redcurrants etc. A few taxonomists place the gooseberries in a separate genus, Grossularia, but since gooseberry-blackcurrant hybrids (e.g. the Jostaberry) can be cultivated, this seems inappropriate. However the gooseberries differ somewhat from the currants, chiefly in their spinous stems, and in their flowers growing on short footstalks, solitary, or two or three together, instead of in racemes.

w The first part of the word has been usually treated as an etymological corruption either of the Dutch word Kruisbezie or the allied German Krausbeere, or of the earlier forms of the French groseille. The New English Dictionary takes the obvious derivation from goose and berry as probable; the grounds on which plants and fruits have received names associating them with animals are so commonly inexplicable, that the want of appropriateness in the meaning is enough for those authors to assume that the word is an etymological corruption. Alternatively the word has been connected to the Middle High German krus (curl, crisped), latinized as grossularia.

w The wild gooseberry is a small, straggling bush, nearly resembling the cultivated plant, the branches being thickly set with sharp spines, standing out singly or in diverging tufts of two or three from the bases of the short spurs or lateral leaf shoots, on which the bell-shaped flowers are produced, singly or in pairs, from the groups of rounded, deeply-crenated 3 or 5 lobed leaves.

w The fruit is smaller than in the garden kinds, but is often of good flavor; it is generally hairy, but in one variety smooth, constituting the R. uva-crispa of writers; the colour is usually green, but plants are occasionally met with having deep purple berries.

w The gooseberry is indigenous in Europe and western Asia, growing naturally in alpine thickets and rocky woods in the lower country, from France eastward, perhaps as far as the Himalaya. In Britain it is often found in copses and hedgerows and about old ruins, but has been so long a plant of cultivation that it is difficult to decide upon its claim to a place in the native flora of the island. Common as it is now on some of the lower slopes of the Alps of Piedmont and Savoy, it is uncertain whether the Romans were acquainted with the gooseberry, though it may possibly be alluded to in a vague passage of Pliny:The hot summers of Italy, in ancient times as at present, would be unfavorable to its cultivation. Abundant in Germany and France, it does not appear to have been much grown there in the middle ages, though the wild fruit was held in some esteem medicinally for the cooling properties of its acid juice in fevers; while the old English name, Fea-berry, still surviving in some provincial dialects, indicates that it was similarly valued in Britain, where it was planted in gardens at a comparatively early period.

Nannyberry or sheepberry

w Nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) is a large shrub or small tree native to the north-eastern United States and southern Canada from New Brunswick south to New York and west to the Dakotas. The Nannyberry is also called Sweet viburnum or Sheepberry.

w Like all viburnums, the leaf of the Nannyberry is oppositely arranged on the twig, it is oval, 3.5 inches long, finely serrate, with a winged petiole. The flowers are small, whitish and arranged in large round clusters. The fruit is a small round blue-black drupe, about 3/8 of an inch on a reddish stem. The fruit is sweet and edible. The bark of the Nannyberry is grayish-brown, and broken into small scales. Twigs of the Nannyberry are smooth, tough, flexible and produce an offensive odour when crushed or bruised.

Mulberry

w Both for fruit and ornament the mulberry should be more generally planted. Even if the fruit is not to the taste, the tree is naturally open-centered and round-headed, and is an interesting subject; some of the varieties have finely cut leaves. The fruits are in great demand by the birds, and after they begin to ripen the strawberry beds and cherry trees are freer from robins and other fruit-eating birds. For this reason alone they are a valuable tree for the fruit-grower. Trees may be purchased cheaper than one can propagate them.

w Mulberry refers both to the mulberry tree and to the fruit of that tree. It also refers to the closely related Paper Mulberry Broussonetia papyrifera.

w The mulberries are small to medium-sized trees native to warm temperate areas of Asia and North America. They are fast-growing when young, but soon become slow-growing and rarely exceed 10-15 m tall. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, often lobed, more often lobed on juvenile shoots than on mature trees, and toothed on the margin. The fruit is a multiple fruit, 2-3 cm long, red ripening dark purple.

w The fruit is edible fruit and is widely used in some places. The fruit of the Black Mulberry, native to southwest Asia, and the Red Mulberry, native to eastern North America, have the best flavour. The fruit of the White Mulberry, an east Asian species which is extensively naturalized in urban regions of eastern North America is insipid in flavour.