Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Rubus enslenii Tratt.
- Family: Rose (Rosaceae)
- Flowering: April-June
- Field Marks: This blackberry differs by its low-arching to trailing, non-glaucous stems that are only 1/6 inch in diameter at maturity and without prickles or with only very weak prickles. The leaf stalks and flower stalks lack glandular hairs.
- Habitat: Woods, thickets.
- Habit: Slender shrub to 5 feet long.
- Stems: Upright at first, but becoming low-arching or trailing, not glaucous, up to 1/6 inch in diameter, without prickles or with very weak prickles.
- Leaves: Alternate; those of the sterile stems with 3 leaflets, the leaflets broadly lanceolate to obovate, pointed at the tip, tapering or rounded at the base, toothed, thin, smooth to soft-hairy on the lower surface, leaf stalks smooth or with glandless hairs; those of the flowering stems simple or divided into 3 leaflets, otherwise similar to the leaves of the sterile stems.
- Flowers: 1-3 at the tips of the branches, up to 1 1/2 inches across, on glandless stalks up to 3 1/2 inches long.
- Sepals: 5, green, attached below to form a cup, the lobes lanceolate.
- Petals: 5, white, free from each other, up to 3/4 inch long.
- Stamens: Numerous.
- Pistils: Numerous, each with a superior ovary.
- Fruits: Many drupelets in a short cylindrical cluster up to 1 inch in diameter.
- Notes: The exceptionally flavorful fruits are eaten by animals, including humans.
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