How to Identify Wild Raspberry Plants in Winter or Early Spring

In my popular article, "How to Grow and Cultivate Wild Raspberries in your Backyard," I said that there were five types of wild berries that grew in the wild, followed by a very brief description of each wild raspberry plant. As the article was about wild raspberry cultivation, a closer look at the specifics of each variety would have been burdensome, and should best be left for a separate article. So in this article, we are going to take a closer look at how to discover and identify wild raspberries.

I said that there are five types of wild berry; however one is not an actual wild raspberry but wild blackberry, a plant commonly mistaken for a wild raspberry. The other four wild raspberry varieties are Black Raspberry, Red Raspberry, Wine Berry or Wine Raspberry, and a wild variant of the black raspberry with orange fruit.

We will start with blackberry, just to get it out of the way, so it won't be ringing in your ears like a sophisticated phone. Blackberries form a dense clump of green to gray, very thorny brush. The Blackberry canes lack any powdery color to them and also lack any fur. Average height of blackberry canes is between five and seven feet. The blackberry canes are less likely to bend over and root in the ground. In winter, the biggest difference between wild blackberries and wild raspberries is that wild blackberries look "tough." In the summer, the Blackberry leaf is larger, the flowers of the blackberry are more showy and the blackberry fruit ripens later in summer. Blackberries are edible, always are black, and are tart unless allowed to fully ripen on the vine. Blackberry spreads by underground runners as opposed to rooting tips. Blackberries usually also have a tougher root system due to their runners.