ROSACEAE. 



115 



RUBUS. Bramble. 

 (Family Rosaceae). 



Rather soft-wooded simple low 

 shrubs, mostly armed with prick- 

 les, occasionally trailing or 

 scrambling over supports: decidu- 

 ous, or in warm regions more or 

 less evergreen. Shoots moderate, 

 often 5-angled: pith relatively 

 large, brownish, crenately round 

 or sharply 5-angled, continuous. 

 Buds moderate, sessile, oblong, 

 ovoid, commonly superposed with 

 the upper developing the first 

 year or the second smaller and 

 covered by the petiole, and oc- 

 casionally collaterally branched, 

 with some half-dozen exposed 

 scales. Leaf-scars alternate, torn 

 and irregularly shriveled on the 

 much-raised persistent petiole- 

 base: bundle-trace not discernible, 

 but 3 bundles evident when the 



crescent- or U-shaped petiole remnant is cut across at its 

 base: stipule-scars lacking, but the stipules often persistent 

 at top of the petiole remnant. Winter-character references 

 under Neillia. 



The brambles, or raspberries and blackberries as they are 

 called usually in this country, vegetatively similar to the 

 roses, present one of the rare instances of deciduous leaves 

 which do not disarticulate by a cleancut abscission but tear 

 away in the autumn. Growers of small-fruits are familiar, 

 too, with the fact that they do not stop their seasonal growth 

 at a definitely limited point but, like many willows, a num- 

 ber of them continue to produce unmatured shoots until 



