Black Raspberries and Blackberries

The brambles

Wild brambles (Rubus) are thorny, arching canes with compound leaves and five-petaled white flowers. Each cane lives two years: it grows leaves the first year and flowers and fruits the second, then dies. They’re among the easiest and safest wild foods; there are no poisonous look-alikes among Wisconsin’s aggregate berries.

Wild fruits are explicitly allowed on DNR land for personal use ¹, and berry picking is the most common foraging in Wisconsin.

Black raspberries

Black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis), or blackcaps, grow along woods edges, fencerows, and clearings, especially in southern and central Wisconsin.

• Canes: arching, often rooting where the tips touch the ground, with a whitish, waxy bloom that rubs off, and scattered hooked prickles.
• Leaves: usually three leaflets, white and woolly underneath.
• Fruit: ripens red, then purplish black, around early July. A ripe berry is dull black and drops into your hand with a light touch.
• Flavor: rich, sweeter and more intense than a red raspberry.

Red raspberries

Wild red raspberries (Rubus idaeus) grow in sunny clearings, cutovers, and burns, and they’re especially abundant in the north, often in great thickets after logging. They ripen in July, overlapping the blackcaps. Canes are bristly rather than strongly thorny, and the leaves are white underneath.

Blackberries

Blackberries (several Rubus species, mostly R. allegheniensis and its relatives) grow in old fields, clearings, and woods edges across the state.

• Canes: stout, ridged, with large, stout prickles; no bloom.
• Leaves: three to five leaflets, green beneath.
• Fruit: ripens from red to glossy black from late July through August, and the berries are larger than raspberries.
• Ripe test: a ripe blackberry turns dull and falls off with a gentle pull; glossy ones are often still tart.

Dewberries are trailing, ground-running blackberries of sandy soils, with fewer, larger drupelets.

Telling them apart

The decisive test is the core (the receptacle):

• A raspberry pulls away hollow, like a thimble, leaving the white core on the plant.
• A blackberry breaks off with the core inside, so the fruit is solid.

Black raspberries also have the whitish waxy canes and white leaf undersides that blackberries lack.

Picking

• Dress for it: long sleeves and pants against thorns, poison ivy, and nettles that share the habitat, and check for ticks afterward. Wisconsin’s deer ticks carry Lyme disease.
• Pick into a shallow container; raspberries crush under their own weight. A container hung from your belt frees both hands.
• Go early in the day, and come back every two or three days in season; berries ripen in waves.
• Leave plenty. Birds, bears, and other animals depend on them. Bears love berry patches in the north; make noise.
• Find patches in winter by their canes, and in spring by their flowers.

Using them

Raspberries and blackberries are best eaten the day they’re picked; they mold quickly. Don’t wash until just before using.

• Fresh, on cereal or with cream.
• Jam and jelly: black raspberry jam is a Wisconsin farmhouse classic, and blackberries make good seedless jelly.
• Pies and cobblers.
• Freeze them spread on a tray, then bag them.

What to take from this

Brambles are safe and abundant: black raspberries with whitish canes and white leaf undersides ripen around early July, red raspberries in July (especially up north), and blackberries with big thorns from late July into August. Raspberries come off hollow; blackberries keep their core. Dress for thorns and ticks, pick into shallow containers, and leave plenty for wildlife.