Horticulture Heading

 

Book cover - Common Weeds of New ZealandAn Illustrated Guide to
Common Weeds
of New Zealand

 

Rubus fruticosus
blackberry

Family ROSACEAE

Reproduced from
Common Weeds of New Zealand
by Ian Popay, Paul Champion & Trevor James
ISBN 0 473 09760 5
by kind permission of the
New Zealand Plant Protection Society

Publication or other use of images or descriptive text on these pages is unauthorised unless written permission is obtained from the authors and publisher.
Appropriate acknowledgement of the publication Common Weeds of New Zealand must always be given.

Available from Nationwide Book Distributors

Rubus fruticosus - blackberryVery prickly, scrambling, woody perennial shrub up to 2 m or more tall, bearing large white or pink flowers followed by black berries. Extremely variable in leaf shape and plant form.

  • Flowers White to pink, 2-3 cm in diameter, with five petals and numerous stamens, in many-flowered clusters. Flowers Nov-Apr.
  • Fruit Aggregated berries 10-15 mm long, red at first, turning black when ripe, made up of twenty to fifty two-seeded drupelets. Seeds widely spread by birds.
  • Leaves Compound, three to five, oval, toothed leaflets arranged palmately. Stalks and mid-ribs prickly.
  • Stems Up to 8 m long, arching, entangling, woody, armed with savage backward pointing thorns. Stems rooting at tips to form new plants. New stems grow from the base each year.
  • Roots Stout, branched, creeping underground roots.

Habitat

Reverting land, scrub, road-sides, hedgerows, swamps and waste places.

Distribution

Common to locally abundant throughout NZ including Stewart and Chatham Islands. Originally from temperate northern hemisphere regions.

Comments

Very common nuisance weed. Can become a major weed of pastures in some areas, like Wairoa. A preferred food for goats, which control it effectively, but need to be confined with it. Otherwise, control can be difficult. Seedlings are very slow growing, and can be controlled by moderate grazing pressure. The species is extremely variable and has sometimes been divided into many species and very many varieties. One of the more distinctive, sometimes distinguished as a separate species, is cut-leaved blackberry (Rubus laciniatus). All blackberries are subject to Pest Plant Management Strategies in several regions of NZ. Details are available from individual regional councils or unitary authorities.

Related species

Other species of Rubus include the native bush lawyers (Rubus australis, Rubus cissoides and Rubus schmidelioides), with long, semi-woody stems, sprawling or climbing in native forest and bush margins. They have backward-pointing spines that often hinder the progress of humans or animals through the bush.

Derivation of botanical name

Rubus (Lat.) = bramble; fruticosus (Lat.) = bushy.

 


Get Acrobat Reader

Web-notes: Weed Links

On this site

Reproduced from Common Weeds of New Zealand:

External Links

WeedbustersWeedbusters New Zealand
Weedbusters is a weeds awareness and education programme that aims to protect New Zealand's environment from the increasing weed problem.
AgPest
A free tool to assist farmers and agricultural professionals in decision-making regarding weed and pest identification, biology, impact and management.
Weed keyNew Zealand Weeds Key
An interactive identification key to the weeds of New Zealand. Developed at Landcare Research.

New Zealand Plant Conservation Network naturalised plants
Search for information on more than 2500 naturalised and weedy plants.
NZ Plant Protection SocietyNew Zealand Plant Protection Society
Their main objective: "To pool and exchange information on the biology of weeds, invertebrate and vertebrate pests, pathogens and beneficial organisms and methods for modifying their effects."
 
Massey UniversityMassey University Weeds Database
A site providing information about New Zealand weeds and weed control. It has a series of pages showing pictures of New Zealand weeds, notes on identification and control. It also provides information on a university paper entitled Controlling Weeds.
 

More Plant Profiles


Home | Journal | Newsletter | Conferences
Awards | Join RNZIH | RNZIH Directory | Links

© 2000–2024 Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture


Last updated: March 1, 2021