Blackberry or Native Raspberry

Rubus Fruticosus - Blackberry

The blackberry season is slowing coming to an end so this post is a little untimely! However, I think its still worth mentioning as the talk is still about how healthy Blackberry looks, or is it Native Raspberry?? Well hopefully this helps:

– Native Raspberry has a different leaf structure to Blackberry. Blackberry has a single leaf at the ends of its stem followed by a gap, then two symmetrical leaves (3 leaves in total). Compare the photo to Native Raspberry and you’ll see it has a single leaf on the stem with 2 symmetrical leaves that actually join to the leading leaf followed by two more further down the stem (5 leaves in total).

The Veins on the leaves are also very different with Native Raspberry being very pronounced and deep compared with Blackberry.

Rubus Parvifolius - Native raspberry

Also worth noting is that there are several types of the weedy Rubus in Australia. None as common as Blackberry, but each are quite different from the good old Native Raspberry which doesn’t tend to grow to such large colonies and takeover.