Rubus of eastern North America 
W. H. BLANCHARD 
In the July number of the American Botanist for 1904, be- 
ginning an article on blackberries, I wrote: “‘Nearly all of our 
botanists have avoided blackberries and are still doing so. They 
prefer to take up lines in which they can feel sure that everything 
is settled. Very little material has been collected and very little 
persistent, patient field work has been done. The writer has 
dropped the popular work that so many others are following and 
is making a determined, continuous, and tireless search in this 
neglected field.’’ This search has continued and is now ten years 
old. I have searched throughout the whole of the eastern part 
of the United States and Canada as far west as blackberries are 
found, or from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Lake Winnipeg in 
Manitoba, and south to Florida, missing none of the states or 
provinces except West Virginia, South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, 
Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, making the search 
as complete as my time and limited means would allow. 
I could get little positive information from others when I got 
to a section, and was obliged to search out everything myself 
personally and generally alone. Some aid was obtained by visiting 
herbaria, and all such were visited if Rubus was known or suspected 
to be found, and botanists were asked for information wherever 
I went. The information thus gained as to stations for Rubus 
was of great value, enabling me to learn in hours what otherwise 
would have taken me days to have learned without it. As a 
result of this protracted, arduous, and expensive undertaking, 
I venture to say and say with confidence, that eight species in- 
clude the great bulk of our blackberries, perhaps ninety per cent 
of them. 
They occupy longitudinal belts extending across the territory 
under consideration, and are therefore justly distinguishable into 
northern and southern kinds, and not as has been suspected into 
eastern and western. This belting in range is broken in the case 
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