Common blackberries here are starting to ripen into high-summer delicacies for outdoor hikers who don’t mind consuming unwashed fruit. (The dark ones shown here were scrumptious.)
These wild brambles also are known as Allegheny blackberries, as their scientific name indicates (Rubus allegeniensis). They are members of the rose family and native to eastern and central North America.
Common blackberries on the vine often are difficult for the casual observer to differentiate from their rose family cousins, black raspberries, which grow in the east as Rubus occidentalis and along the west coast as R. leucodermis.
However, after a berry is plucked, anyone easily can see if its center is hollow like a thimble (a raspberry) or “corked” like a jug (a blackberry – think “blocked berries”):
Leighton Archive Image
(First image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on August 13, 2022.)