Brambles in the hedgerow (Brambles)

Member Name: mumsymary

Product:	Brambles
Date:	22/09/08 (148 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: tasty

Disadvantages: thorns

Brambles, Blackberry brambles straddle the pyracantha at the bottom of my garden. They ramble unrestrained over the wall. Beware anyone who climbs my boundary the bramble has some fearsome spines, thorns that will tear your skin to threads.
Raspberries are of the same genus Rubus the family Rosaceae and they can also be called a bramble. The word bramble really relates to the long thorny stem
With care I pick the black berries that grow on this bramble, many a blackberry bramble thorn has embedded itself in my tender skin.
The blackberry has been tamed for garden use and bred not to have thorns also bigger berries.
However my blackberries are the wild thorny kind.

The bramble will flower and fruit on the cane in the second year after it shoots from the ground.
Bramble flowers from April and may. The flower 5 petalled, you can see the similarity to a wild rose. The petals white pink to pale lavender coloured lots of stamens with yellow pollen. Bees love to collect the pollen from the blackberry and it makes a lovely flavoured honey.

The bramble will fruit giving black berries from August through September
The berry of the blackberry is an aggregate fruit of many drupelets each druplete containing a seed. Be careful you do not get any seeds stuck in between your teeth choose the biggest juiciest fruits to eat.

Blackberry is a delicious fruit I cooked some today with some cooking apples from my apple tree. I added some brown sugar and microwave the apple and blackberry mix and ate it with ice cream. I could not be bothered to make custard, or make a crumble or pastry to make a pie. I might just add a few fresh blackberries to a vanilla or plain yoghurt, or add a few to my breakfast cereal bowl. I could make blackberry wine it tastes delicious, port like, but you need a lot of blackberries for that, and time too. Maybe it's something to do when I retire

I have in the past made blackberry jam, or blackberry jelly. I have fond childhood memories of black berry picnics with my parents, sister, aunts, uncles and cousins. We would go to a local field and pick buckets full of blackberries. Mother and aunt providing a picnic basket full of goodies.

In those pre freezer day's mum would make bottle the fruit for use in the winter as well as making jams. However I shall freeze a few for use later, I may even make a double crumble mix bake and eat one and bake and freeze the other.
The bramble fruit the blackberry contains vitamins C and E, also plant estrogens, in fact reading up about black berries I realize how good they are for you.

The blackberry bramble is rampant it spreads rapidly. It roots itself it one of the long brambles touch soil. It will set seed easily a bird may drop its messages from the sky and contain a bramble seed which will grow readily to be a bramble bush.
While we are talking about it, mind those bird messes do not put your washing line under the tree where the blackbird sits or you will get a black berry bird poop on your best white shirt.
Black berry stains are very difficult to remove they make a beautiful purple stain.
A bramble is easy to cultivate if you want one in the garden to get a good fruit buy one from the garden centre it will give a bigger fruit but saying that my wild ones are just fine .
Brambles will cultivate on any soil they grow wild on field edges along railway lines on poor soil.

Insects love the blackberry many moths use it as its food plant the adult laying its egg on the Grizzled skipper butterfly uses it too. Other butterflies will use the flower as a nectar source.
Birds like the blackbird and small mammals will eat the juicy black berries.
Ov4r all the Bramble is a thorny bush that is a good wildlife bush makes an inpenatrable fence and its fruit are good to eat .

Summary: A thorny bush that bears black berries