{"id":310,"date":"2009-05-28T07:48:10","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T15:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/?p=310"},"modified":"2010-06-10T16:19:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T00:19:19","slug":"himalaya-berry-as-pretty-as-any-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/2009\/05\/himalaya-berry-as-pretty-as-any-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"Himalaya-berry, as pretty as any rose"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 205px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/resizedhimalayaberry-flower.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/resizedhimalayaberry-flower-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"260\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Single flower of Himalaya-berry is worth a search in your wild garden and along roadsides. Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> <\/em><strong>By Ken Moore<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You may remember the description in this column three weeks ago of the common wild blackberry, <em>Rubus argutus<\/em>, in full flower during our traditional blackberry winter. Coming into full flower this week is another one of those wild blackberries. This one, <em>Rubus discolor<\/em>, Himalaya-berry, bears a flowering branch of quarter-to-half-dollar-size, single-petaled, pale-pink flowers, as pretty as any rose, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running loose in and around Carrboro. It is an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alien blackberry\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because it was introduced from Europe long ago.<\/p>\n<p>I know some of you are already thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, no; here comes another tirade about exotic invasives!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Surprise; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not concerned about this one. It can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come close to competing with the aggressive true native blackberries. This one is uncommon and worth a search in your wild garden and along roadsides and field edges in your neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>Keep your eyes alert for arching, thorny blackberry stems. The Himalaya-berry is not as densely flowering as the common ones. The white-to-pink flowers are borne on more loosely branching flowering stems. The undersides of the leaves are white and pubescent (fuzzy to the touch) in contrast to leaves of the common blackberries, which are green on both surfaces. While you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking, notice that the leaves of the flowering branches, <em>floricanes<\/em>, have three leaflets and the leaves of the non-flowering stems, <em>primocanes<\/em>, have five leaflets, characteristic of all blackberries. Blackberry flowers and fruit are produced on the second-year stems (canes).<\/p>\n<p>I have a few of these Himalaya-berries along the edge of my driveway. A few days ago, I was happy to see them begin flowering. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been taking \u00e2\u20ac\u0153closer looks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d several times each day since. This year, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m particularly taken by the beauty of each individual flower.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 270px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/resizedhimalayaberry-branch.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/resizedhimalayaberry-branch-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"260\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Each one appears to be a delicately pink-shaded rose, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s logical, since blackberries are in the rose family.<\/p>\n<p>Very early one recent, misty morning, I went out to enjoy my stems of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153miniature roses\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and discovered they were all tightly closed. I know that some flowers regularly close up during the night, but I have never noticed this habit in blackberries. Now I know these flowers open and close regularly in response to the sunlight of day. What a natural way this may be to protect mature pollen from being washed away by night-time dew and sunless daytime rains. Now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m more curious about the flowers of plants that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the opening-closing habit, like the flowers of hollies. I remember an old friend explaining that long rainy periods during the spring may result in a sparse crop of holly berries in the fall. That makes sense: no pollen, no pollination. In addition, you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see many pollinators flying about in the rain. No pollinators, no pollination.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 205px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/resizedhimalayaberry-closed.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/resizedhimalayaberry-closed-223x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"254\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Closed flowers open on sunny days to reveal beautiful rose-like flowers on a stem of Himalaya-berry. Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking forward to the Himalaya-berry bearing fruit a few weeks after the traditional Fourth of July blackberry-picking time. I remember tasting the superior sweetness of this foreign berry some years ago. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well worth cultivating in the garden, where it can be well tended and trained along a trellis.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck with your search, and along the way I suspect your keen eyes will make a few other discoveries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ken Moore You may remember the description in this column three weeks ago of the common wild blackberry, Rubus argutus, in full flower during our traditional blackberry winter. Coming into full flower this week is another one of those wild blackberries. This one, Rubus discolor, Himalaya-berry, bears a flowering branch of quarter-to-half-dollar-size, single-petaled, pale-pink [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[34,84,35,85],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-moores-flora","category-spring","tag-blackberry","tag-himalaya-berry","tag-rubus-argutus","tag-rubus-discolor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":692,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}