STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
pointed; the fruit is juicy and acid, not as sweet as that of 
the 
Buack Raspperry—Rubus occidentalis (L.). 
This species is distinguished from the above by its long 
arching flexile branches, covered with purplish red bark, 
strongly-hooked prickles and blackish fruit, very rich, firm 
and sweet. It loves to grow on hilly banks and upturned 
roots in the shade of the forest, where it can send down its 
long flexible branches, which bear an abundance of berries 
long after the Red Raspberry has failed to yield a supply. 
Gray calls this Black Raspberry by the familiar name of 
Thimbleberry; but it is a fruit of the Blackberry (Rubus 
villosus—Ait.) that is commonly known by this name. 
The berries of the Blackberry are not hollow, nor do they, 
like the last, separate from the receptacle; they are conical, 
sweet and luscious to the taste, in quality astringent, but 
not unpleasantly flavored. The berries ripen in August; 
the foliage is veiny, coarse, with strong red prickles, the 
stems strongly armed and covered with a dark-red bark, 
which with the root is highly astringent and used both in 
the form of a tea and syrup in cases of dysentery and 
summer complaint. The fruit in syrup is also considered 
medicinal and useful in similar complaints. 
A very pretty ornamental low creeping shrubby plant is 
the 
Swamp BLackBerRY—Rubus hispidus (L.). 
The branches, very strongly armed with hooked prickles, 
are long and slender, extending two or three feet over the 
ground; leaves, of three leaflets, bright varnished green, 
rounded at the ends, more in form like those of the Straw- 
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