ISO SYSrEM.iriC I'OMOLOGY 



widely cultivated than tiie native red rasplx-rry. Its adaptability 

 for evaporation, because of firm flesh and because the crop 

 ripens in a short season, also gives stimulus to its cultivation. 

 However, fun«xous diseases, especially blue-stem and anthracnose, 

 take so great toll from the black raspberry, and evaporated fruit 

 is giving way to the canned product so rapidly, that the black 

 raspberry is now much less popular than the red, with the pros- 

 pect that the purple-cane varieties will soon overtake both. Po.s- 

 sibly no fruit is more easily improved, however, than the black 

 raspberry so that the introduction of better varieties may give 

 the cultivation of this fruit new impetus. The black raspberry 

 is quite as commonly called "black-cap" and is not infrequently 

 known as the ''thimbleberry." 



263. The black raspberry described. — No other species of 

 cultivated brambles can be confused with the black raspberry, 

 as a comparison of the following description with that of other 

 raspberries will show : — 



3. B. occidentaJis, Linn. (Plate XX) Canes strong, erect, glaucous, 

 not bristly, beset with hooked spines; recurving and rooting at the tips. 

 Leaves compound with 3 or rarely 5 leaflets which are ovate, pointed, 

 sharply serrate and notched, white beneath; petioles armed with prickles; 

 lateral leaflets usually stalked. Flowers borne in small, dense, prickly 

 clusters; petals shorter than the sepals. Fruit black or sometimes amber- 

 white, rather small, hemispherical, firm ; ripens later than the red raspberry. 



264. Habitat and history of the black raspberry. — The black 

 raspberry ranges south from New Brunswick and southern 

 Quebec to Georgia and Missouri, and westward to Oregon, 

 Washington, and British Columbia. A botanical form, var. 

 pallichis, Bailey, wdth yellow-amber fruits, is sometimes found 

 growing w41d. This species is usually in fence-rows, in copses, 

 and along roadsides, a common and useful food-plant, although 

 sometimes a pestiferous weed in vast regions throughout the 

 extensive territory in which it is native. Gregg, Ohio, Kansas, 

 and Cumberland are typical black raspberries. 



Nicholas Longworth, an early horticulturist of note in Cin- 

 cinnati, cultivated the first named black raspberry, the Ohio 

 Everbearing, a variety which long remained a standard. The 

 growing of black raspberries hardly became an established in- 

 dustry until after 1850, wiien H. H. Doolittle, Oaks Corners, 



