Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses - Prairie blackberry

PRAIRIE BLACKBERRY

File Size: 138 KB

Rubus laudatus A. Berger

Morris County, Kansas

Height: Shrubs, to 10 feet

Family: Rosaceae - Rose family

Flowering Period: May, June

Trunks:

Canes erect or ascending, primocanes and floricanes eventually arched, rarely rooting at tips, glabrous, not glaucous, armed; prickles straight or recurved, .12 to .24 inch; bark reddish purple, smooth, not glaucous; wood white, soft.

Leaves:

Deciduous, alternate, palmately compound or 3-foliolate; stipules persistent, fused to petiole, .5 to .63 inch; petiole .8 to 2.8 inches, glabrate or sparsely pubescent, usually armed with few recurved prickles; primocane leaflets (3-)5, lower surface grayish green, sparsely to densely velvety, upper surface dark green to green, sparsely pubescent, sometimes densely pubescent along midvein; central leaflet petiolule .2 to .8 inch, blade ovate to elliptic or elliptic-oblong, 2.8 to 5.2 inches long, 1.2 to 2.8 inches wide, base cordate to rounded, margins serrate or twice-serrate, apex acute to short-acuminate; lateral leaflets petiolule 0 to .12 inch, blade elliptic.

Flowers:

Inflorescences axillary or terminal, racemes, usually slightly flared toward apex, leafy, 2 to 6.4 inches, 4-15-flowered; peduncles sparsely pubescent, usually armed with recurved prickles, sometimes unarmed; pedicels .4 to 1.6 inches, sparsely pubescent, unarmed or armed with few recurved prickles. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric, 1 to 1.6 inches diam.; hypanthium hemispheric; sepals ovate, .2 to .3 inch long, .08 to .16 inch wide; petals 5, white, obovate, .5 to .8 inch; pistils numerous on dome-shaped receptacle, ovary superior, 1-locular; style .06 to .08 inch; stigma lobed.

Fruit:

June-August; aggregated drupelets, ovoid to cylindric, .4 to 1 inch long, .3 to .55 inch wide, not separating from receptacle; drupelets purplish black, not glaucous; stone 1 per drupelet, yellow to tan, compressed-ovoid, .1 to .12 inch.

Habitat:

Tallgrass prairies, glades, thickets, pastures, roadsides, floodplains.

Distribution:

East 1/2 of Kansas

Origin:

Native

Comments:

More work is needed to understand the genus Rubus in Kansas and the Great Plains.

Prairie blackberry leaf