Wild common blackberries here are starting to ripen into high-summer delicacies for outdoor hikers who don’t mind consuming unwashed fruit and an occasional thorn-nick. (The dark ones shown here were tangy-scrumptious.)
These brambles also are known as Allegheny blackberries, as their scientific name indicates (Rubus allegeniensis). They’re 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 in the wild 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, it’s easy to tell the difference. After a berry is plucked, look at its bottom: if its center is hollow like a thimble, it’s a raspberry; if its center is “corked” like a jug, it’s a blackberry:
(First image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on August 25, 2024.)