Trailing Blackberry                              

Trailing blackberry is a native perennial, low trailing shrub. Its trailing or climbing stem is armed with tiny, slender, hooked spines. This species produces male and female flowers borne on separate plants that are white or pink with elongated petals. Both flowers are five petaled. Trailing blackberry produces edible berries in open, sunny areas from April to August.

Flowers

Trailing blackberry produces large white or pink flowers ( to 4 cm across ); in flat-topped purplish-hued clusters from the leaf axis; male and female flowers are separate plants.

Blooming time is April through August.

Fruits

Trailing blackberry produces a hanging berry that is up to 1 cm long. The blackberry is composed of an aggregation of drupes. The color of the berries are deep red to shiny black. The fruits are of same general shape and character as loganberries and boysenberries, but smaller in size. The fruits are edible, sweet, juicy, and fleshy.

Trailing blackberry is prevalent and abundant on disturbed sites, at low to middle elevations. It also can behave as a weed in some suburban and rural areas. Because the fruit of trailing blackberry is at ground level, it is a important food source for a variety of birds and mammals.

The vines of trailing blackbery were used by the Saanish Indians of Vancouver Island to place over and under food in steam cooking pits, and also for ritual scrubbing. They and other Coast Salish groups sometimes used the fruits as a purple stain. The berries were eaten fresh, or mashed and dried in cakes, by the Straits Salish, Halkomelen, Squamish, Sechelt, Comex, Nootka, and South Kwakiutt. Other indian uses include: using the leaves and roots to treat diarrhea, dysentary, cholera, excessive menstruation, fever, and sores in the mouth. The leaves of this species also were used as a substitution for tea during the Colonial Tea Boycott. Currently, teas made from this species are recommended by herbalists as a diuretic and mild astringent.