CHAPTER XV 

 THE BRAMBLES 



Although any prickly shrub may be called a bramble, the 

 name is applied more particularly to species of the genus Rubus. 

 Since there are not less than 400 species of Rubus in the world, 

 to which about 3000 Latin names have been applied, with a 

 thousand or more cultivated varieties, the systematist whether 

 in botany or pomology has in the brambles a task to tax his 

 ingenuity in classification. The task is made more difficult by 

 many natural and cultivated hybrids, some of which are hard to 

 put in their proper places. Twenty or more species of brambles 

 are found in gardens and orchards, the commonest of which are 

 the raspberries, blackberries, dewberries, and loganberries. 



257. The genus Rubus. — With the pomes, drupes, and straw- 

 berries, the brambles belong to the order Rosaceae and are 

 closely related to the roses. The cultivated species of Rubus 

 come from temperate Europe and North America, but some 

 promising forms grow wild in temperate Asia, and several fur- 

 nish wild food in temperate South America. Even the tropics 

 in both hemispheres are enriched by a few edible brambles, none 

 of which, how^ever, is cultivated. The chief characters in this 

 variable genus are : 



Plants evergreen or deciduous; shrubby, climbing, or running; thorny, 

 prickly or rarely unarmed; variously pubescent or glabrous, sometimes 

 glandular; tips of canes usually recurving. Leaves alternate, petiolate, 

 stipulate; simple or compound, usually palmately lobed or palmately com- 

 pound; stipules free or jointed to the base of the petiole. Flowers some- 

 times solitary but usually many-flowered in corymbs or racemes; white, 

 pink, rose-colored or red; calyx composed of a little cup with 5 persistent 

 sepals crowning it; petals 5, conspicuous, deciduous; stamens numerous, 

 inserted on the margin of the cup; pistils many, inserted on the rising bot- 

 tom of the cup, becoming juicy drupelets in all of the cultivated species. 



Botanists divide the genus into several sub-genera, of which 

 the pomologist is interested in but two : Idaeobatus, the rasp- 

 berries ; and Eubatus, the blackberries and dewberries. 



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