Opinions

Ray Floret’s Foray:
Blackberries

Ray Floret
OP Contributor

I’ve almost staunched the bleeding. The criss-cross of thin red
scratches across my shins and forearms doesn’t hurt that much, but
they really look impressive. Maybe this’ll get some pity from the
spouse; I look like I’ve been flogged by a really short disciplinari-
an...my darling wife will say I likely deserve it for something else at
which I wasn’t caught.

I was just wrestling with that tasty rascal of the “Wet” Coast, per-
haps our yummiest weed, nature’s barbed wire, your friend and mine:
the Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus procerus).

This blackberry is the strong silent type: barely whispering during a
high wind, the plants can silently eat a shed. They build an evergreen
thicket of new, arching canes, which luxuriate over previous yeats’
growth, or anything else that couldn’t get up and run fast enough.

The late spring, five-petalled white flowers buzz with fuzzy bees.
Then, in late summer, the clusters of chubby jet-black berries draw
crowds of brave and usually low-income harvesters easily distin-
guished by their yellow plastic ice-cream pails. Kids eat four or five
berries, and then huck others at their friends. One point if the berry
sticks, eight points if you successfully smush one into an ear other
than your own. The game rules apply equally to raspberries. The
problem with blackberries is that the berries don’t separate from
their pithy, tasteless base (in botanese: the agglomeration of dru-
pelets maintains a persistent receptacle). Typically, therefore, black-
berries are cooked to soften their receptacles. Many of us are pithy
and tasteless, only becoming more so when baked.

Blackberries don’t mean to be so vicious. Their thorns are not for
attack, or even defense really. And, correctly, the ‘thorns’ are prickles;
arising like saw teeth along their green skin. Thorns only arise on
species that have such modified “branches.” Every rose does not
have a thorn, just prickles. Fall into a “Pyracantha” some late night:
Those sucking chest wounds are caused by the finger-long thorns.
That’s if you can un-impale yourself. A good plant for home
defense.

Blackberry’s relatively innocent prickles are for climbing, like
pitons. Try to pull a cane out of a tree or shrub in which a blackber-
ry is lounging and you'll see how well they work. Enough prickling at
this thorny issue. Oh yeah, “spines” are modified leaves, like on cacti.
The one in your back is not, however, a modified leaf. Commercially,
blackberries are grown in vast, rowed fields in Oregon, and growers
usually grow thornless varieties so prickles don’t break off into the
machine-harvested fruit, so avoiding a litigious consuming public.

Mostly recovered from round one, I’m off to try the new brush-
cutter attachment on my commercial trimmer. If it works, it’ll be like
the Jaws of Life, saving fences, cars, and shuffling neighbourhood
octogenarians from the shimmering green tentacles iconized in dark
Japanese anime. Come to think of it, I think they ate my hibachi. I
haven’t seen it anywhere.

 

12 | OtherPress

August

2004