I took these photos at the end of April and wanted to write about them in the spring. I imagine that in the busyness of work the time slipped away from me and the photos got a little buried as I continued to wander around looking at nature taking more photos.
Anyway, meet the our native trailing blackberry that is fairly prevalent out at the arboretum. Here’s a small patch that’s blooming along the river. It can form a dense thicket as it spreads and its vines trail across the ground. I few years ago I wondered why I wasn’t seeing a more abundant crop of berries like the non-native Himalayan Blackberry produces. I discovered that the trailing blackberry is diecious, the male and female flowers are on separate plants. Therefore, as the blackberries “trail” along the landscape and spread, it is not uncommon to encounter fairly large patches of blackberries vines that are only male and don’t bear any fruit.
