berry · The Trophy Room
Blackberry
The PNW's great edible weed. Himalayan blackberry is an invasive thug that swallows fence lines, lots, and roadsides whole — and every August it pays its rent in fruit, free by the bucketful to anyone willing to bleed a little for it. The taste of a Northwest late summer.
Identifying
- big, glossy black aggregate berries that pull off the core solid (unlike a raspberry's hollow cap)
- thick, arching canes armed with heavy curved thorns
- five-leaflet palmate leaves, pale and felted underneath
- forms impenetrable mounding brambles — the sheer size of the thicket is a tell
Facts
- introduced as a crop, now the most aggressive invasive shrub on the West Coast — foraging it is doing the land a favor
- the earliest berries at the tip of each cluster are the biggest and sweetest
- ripe when they detach at a light touch; a tug means wait another day
