Woodland Trust

Nature's CalendarNature Detectives

Keep your eyes peeled for the first snowdrop flowers opening - record them on our survey!

Bramble fruits. Casandra Kociakbramble

Rubus fruticosus

Facts

Why not download our bramble fact sheet?


bramble fact sheet 

 

Blackberry brandy recipe

A simple recipe that will make your mouth water. 

blackberry brandy

 You can also try making other hedgerow tipples:

 free hedgerow tipples pack

  Bramble flower. Margaret Barton

  • A very familiar, vigorous and thorny scrambling shrub
     
  • Flowers are white or pink
     
  • Fruit (blackberry) goes from green through-red, to deep purple and finally black when ripe




Courtesy of the BBC

 
Where found

Common in woodland, hedges, scrub and wasteland.

It will grow almost anywhere throughout the British Isles.

When to look for

  • Flowers June-July
     
  • Ripe fruit from late August

Fabulous blackberry facts

  • The fruit of the bramble is not a true berry - botanically it is termed an aggregate fruit

  • There are around 400 micro-species of wild blackberry growing in the UK

  • Strong ale brewed from blackberries, malt and hops was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries

  • Blackberries are known to have health benefits for women due to their high levels of phytoestrogens

  • Blackberry pips were found in the stomach contents of a Neolithic man, during an archaeological excavation in Essex in 1911

  • Thorny brambles were used by the ancient Britons the way modern people use barbed wire

  • Gerards Herbal gives a remedy made from blackberry leaves 'for fastening the teeth back in'
 

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