If you’re like me, you love blackberry everything – jam, cobbler, pie, glaze, you name it. But good, fresh blackberries have a short season and, if you’re buying responsibly (that is, from a reputable local farmer), they can be expensive.
This expense is for good reason: while blackberries are one of the easier fruits to cultivate, growing and harvesting them is still labor-intensive, especially if you’re not using commercial pesticides and fertilizers.
But you don’t just want pints of local blackberries to enjoy over a summer: you want, nay, need, gallons of them for canning, baking, and eating out of hand. And to achieve this need, without destroying your bank account, you’ve decided to grow your own. Here’s how to do it.
Blackberries, like other plants in its genus (such as raspberries), grow on long stems, or canes, usually in two-year periods. This means the canes are biennial, while the roots of the main plant are perennial (return year after year). In the first year of cane growth, the plant produces no flowers (or nearly no flowers) and, therefore, no fruit, and focuses its energy on rooting and growing a robust cane. In the second year, the same cane (“old wood”) flowers and fruits, and the main plant spreads new canes.
Blackberries have super shallow root systems, and can thrive in many soils, including very poor, rocky soil, and spread and hybridize with other like plants quickly. This is why you’ll see huge thorny brambles on mountainsides and on trails, or even on the outskirts of your own yard near wooded areas. It’s very easy for us to pull up, move, and replant these buggers, and they do it themselves if left alone. Spoooooky.
So, if you plant a cane or two in your yard the first year, you can get many, many more canes and years of blackberries, with minimal work involved. Heck, you can let your whole yard get covered in blackberries within a decade. I don’t recommend it, especially if you’re going with a thorny variety, but you do you, Maleficent.
Despite the name, the “erect” varieties still benefit from some trellising for easy picking and ground upkeep. We have all three varieties growing somewhere on our property, with the second and third planted on purpose, and the first ripping my sleeves as I mow the edges of our land.
Blackberries are a delicious berry that can be grown in home gardens However, before planting blackberries, many gardeners wonder – do blackberry plants have thorns? The answer is – it depends! Some blackberry varieties are thorny while others are thornless In this article, we’ll examine the factors that determine whether a blackberry cultivar will be thorny or smooth.
Overview of Thorns in Blackberry Plants
Wild blackberries growing in nature almost always have thorns on their stems. These prickly canes help protect the plant against grazing animals that might eat the leaves and berries. So for wild blackberries, thorns provide a clear evolutionary advantage.
However, when it comes to cultivated garden varieties, some blackberries have been selectively bred to remove thorns. The thornless types were developed to make blackberry plants easier to manage and harvest for home growers. Below are some key points on thorns in blackberry plants:
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Wild native blackberries are thorny as a defense mechanism.
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Cultivated blackberry varieties may be smooth and thornless due to selective breeding.
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Thorns act as a deterrent against foragers like birds, deer, and other wildlife that might eat the berries.
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Thornless blackberry cultivars are much easier for gardeners to pick and tend to,
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Whether a blackberry plant has thorns or not is controlled genetically.
Do Wild Blackberries Have Thorns?
Wild blackberry plants growing in nature in places like woodlands, meadows, and roadsides almost always have thorns. The thorny stems act as a defense mechanism to protect the plant. In particular, the thorns help:
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Discourage deer, livestock, and other large grazing mammals from eating the stems and leaves
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Make it harder for birds to perch on branches and feed on the ripe berries
So for wild plants, the thorns provide a clear evolutionary advantage. Plants with thorns are less palatable and suffer less damage from foraging animals. They survive and reproduce more successfully compared to smooth, thornless plants. This is why the thorny trait persists as the norm in wild blackberry populations through natural selection.
Why Were Thornless Blackberries Developed?
Once blackberries began being intentionally cultivated in home gardens and farms, the thorns became problematic for growers. The sharp thorns make picking the berries difficult, painful, and risky. Thorns also cause tangled, confined growth and damage other plants growing nearby.
So plant breeders intentionally crossed smooth, thornless mutant plants with existing thorny blackberry varieties. This allowed developing cultivated plants that had desirable fruit qualities but were thorn-free.
Key advantages of thornless blackberry cultivars:
- Easy, painless hand-harvesting of the berries
- Less tangled, spreading growth habit
- Reduced scratching and puncture damage to growers
- Don’t create impassable thickets like wild plants
What Determines Thorniness in Blackberries?
Whether a blackberry plant is thorny or thornless is controlled genetically. Wild plants inherently have the genes to produce thorns. But cultivated thornless varieties contain specific genes preventing thorn formation.
There are two main sources of thornless genes used in breeding:
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A recessive gene from ‘Merton Thornless’
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A dominant gene from ‘Austin Thornless’
By introducing these non-thorny genes from mutant plants, blackberry breeders were able to develop smooth, spineless blackberry cultivars.
Do Trailing or Erect Blackberries Have More Thorns?
Growth habit is related to thorniness in blackberry plants:
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Erect blackberries – Often thorny but some thornless varieties exist
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Trailing blackberries – Tend to be more heavily thorned overall
Trailing types like dewberries produce long vines running along the ground. They rely more on thorns to cling and anchor themselves.
Erect blackberries grow in a bushier form. Although some erect types have thorns, there are also many thornless varieties. Growers often prefer spineless erect blackberries for easier picking and management.
Examples of Thorny Blackberry Varieties
Some commonly grown thorny blackberry cultivars include:
- Cherokee
- Comanche
- Chester
- Hull
- Illinois Erect
- Shawnee
These produce quality berries but require thorn-proof gloves to harvest. They also need frequent training of wayward shoots.
Examples of Thornless Blackberry Varieties
Some popular thornless blackberry varieties include:
- Ouachita
- Natchez
- Osage
- Triple Crown
- Black Satin
- Dirksen
These have been selectively bred to remove thorns for easier growing and harvest for home gardeners. They yield sweet, juicy berries on smooth, arching canes.
Tips for Managing Thorny Blackberries
If choosing to grow a thorny blackberry, here are some tips for dealing with the spines:
- Train shoots and tie to trellises to control spread
- Use thick gloves and long sleeves when pruning or picking
- Cut out old floricanes immediately after fruiting
- Surround plants with a mulch layer to hinder shoot emergence
- Create tunnels of string/wire for berries to grow through to contain thorns
While wild blackberries are universally thorny, cultivated plants may be either thorny or thornless. Thornlessness is controlled by specific genes introduced through selective breeding. Choosing a spineless variety makes blackberries much easier to grow and harvest. But even thorny types can be successfully managed with protection and training. Consider your options carefully when choosing plants to add these tasty berries to your garden.
Sustainable Baking, Cooking, and Homesteading
So, you wanna grow your own blackberries? Smart.
If you’re like me, you love blackberry everything – jam, cobbler, pie, glaze, you name it. But good, fresh blackberries have a short season and, if you’re buying responsibly (that is, from a reputable local farmer), they can be expensive.
This expense is for good reason: while blackberries are one of the easier fruits to cultivate, growing and harvesting them is still labor-intensive, especially if you’re not using commercial pesticides and fertilizers.
But you don’t just want pints of local blackberries to enjoy over a summer: you want, nay, need, gallons of them for canning, baking, and eating out of hand. And to achieve this need, without destroying your bank account, you’ve decided to grow your own. Here’s how to do it.
Let’s pull back a bit – how, exactly, does a blackberry plant grow and propagate?
Blackberries, like other plants in its genus (such as raspberries), grow on long stems, or canes, usually in two-year periods. This means the canes are biennial, while the roots of the main plant are perennial (return year after year). In the first year of cane growth, the plant produces no flowers (or nearly no flowers) and, therefore, no fruit, and focuses its energy on rooting and growing a robust cane. In the second year, the same cane (“old wood”) flowers and fruits, and the main plant spreads new canes.
Blackberries have super shallow root systems, and can thrive in many soils, including very poor, rocky soil, and spread and hybridize with other like plants quickly. This is why you’ll see huge thorny brambles on mountainsides and on trails, or even on the outskirts of your own yard near wooded areas. It’s very easy for us to pull up, move, and replant these buggers, and they do it themselves if left alone. Spoooooky.
(Also, not literally. They just do the spreading thing underground.)
So, if you plant a cane or two in your yard the first year, you can get many, many more canes and years of blackberries, with minimal work involved. Heck, you can let your whole yard get covered in blackberries within a decade. I don’t recommend it, especially if you’re going with a thorny variety, but you do you, Maleficent.
Speaking of varieties, there are three main types of blackberry plants:
- Erect Thorny Blackberries: These, as the name suggests, have thorns (the gnarly kind that can rip through your jeans). The canes stand “erect”: that is, they don’t need support (like trellising or other plants) to hold the canes.
- Erect Thornless Blackberries: Now with no thorns! These guys can hold themselves up, and don’t rip your face off. Win!
- Trailing Thornless Blackberries: No thorns, but these plants require trellising to keep the canes off the ground.
Despite the name, the “erect” varieties still benefit from some trellising for easy picking and ground upkeep. We have all three varieties growing somewhere on our property, with the second and third planted on purpose, and the first ripping my sleeves as I mow the edges of our land.
Lifting, Pruning, and Cultivating
You’ve successfully planted your main berry brambles, and they’re alive. Hooray! Now what?
In the first year, it’s super important that you do. Not. Let your blackberries produce fruit.
I explain this in more detail in my Pruning post, but the gist is that by pruning the flowers the first year, you allow the main plant focus its energy on establishing good roots, as well as more canes for the coming years. For reference, with good pruning, cutting, and cultivating practices, your blackberry bramble can show this progression:
Okay. You’ve planted your canes. You pruned the flowers in the first year. It’s the second year, and your canes are now bursting with blackberry fruits. Major huzzah!
Your fruits will go from from green and hard, to red and softer, to a dark, nearly black (hence the name) purple and fairly soft.
Blackberries do not continue to ripen after harvest, so be sure to pick fruits that have entirely changed their final color. They also rot super fast on the plant after fully ripening (as in, within a couple of days, and less time when it’s very hot or rainy), so make sure you’re checking your bramble every day for fruit.
Pull berries very gently from the plant (ripe ones should give easily), and try not to disturb the rest of the cane, lest you accidentally knock other berries to the ground, or tear the plant.
Some things to watch out for on and around your blackberries:
- Birds. Oh, how the birdies love berries! You can protect your bramble by draping it with bird netting, which prevents birds from getting to the fruits. We’ve used this before, and it works, but it’s a pain in the butt to remove at the end of a season, as it tangles easily with the growing plant, and it’s not great to throw away. Other solutions are keeping other more attractive crops and leaving them for the birds (this is why we keep the wild blackberries on the edges of our property), and simply beating the winged buggers at their game by harvesting your blackberries early each day.
- Stinkbugs and Junebugs. You’ll run into these guys every time you harvest. They won’t harm you, but they’ll chomp on your berries. I don’t use pesticides or anything with them, and we get a good harvest, so I just kind of live with them and the occasional scream I let out when I pick a junebug instead of a berry.
- Mice and Snakes. Neither of these critters have been a problem for us so far, but they can be if you let the grass around your bushes grow too tall, or don’t pick your berries fast enough before they fall to the ground. (Dropped berries can attract mice, which then attract snakes.) Be sure to wear closed shoes and long pants when harvesting, just in case.
- Yellow Jackets, Wasps, etc. Yet another reason to always wear boots. These buggers will hang out and, in worse cases, build their nests near your bramble if you leave holes and/or lots of berries to rot on the ground. Keep the area harvested and filled in, and always wear protective clothing when picking berries.
- Thorns. If you’ve got a thorny variety, that is. And those thorns can rip through denim, which means they also rip through skin, no problem. I recommend gloves and long sleeves when harvesting berries from thorny canes.
Do Blackberry bushes have thorns? OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!
FAQ
Which blackberry bushes have thorns?
Kiowa Thorny Blackberry Plants. Kiowa (Thorny) “Patented” This blackberry has the largest berry size on the market. 30% larger than Shawnee, though yields are not as high as Shawnee.
Do blackberries have spikes?
Raspberries, black raspberries, and blackberries grow on arching stems called canes. Blackberry canes are thick and angled, with intimidating thorns. Raspberry stems are round with smaller (but no less effective) prickles. The tips of black raspberry canes touch the ground and send down roots, forming new plants.
What can be mistaken for blackberries?
Raspberries and Their Lookalikes
Black raspberries are often confused with blackberries, but it’s easy to tell the difference between the two. Blackberries always have a white core, while black raspberries are hollow, blackberries are also larger, shinier, and they appear later in the growing season.
How many years does it take for a blackberry bush to produce fruit?
| Berry Plant Type | Years Until Fruit |
|---|---|
| Blackberry Plants | 1-2 years |
| Blueberry Plants | 2-3 years |
| Boysenberry Plants | 2-3 years |
| Cranberry Plants | 2-3 years |
Do blackberries have thorns?
Native and wild blackberry shrubs have thorns as native blackberries grow in Bramble bushes that have harsh, prickly, arching branches to prevent birds and critters from consuming blackberries and the vines prior to berry bushes blossoming. But the developed blackberry hybrids have thornless bushes.
Do blackberries have angular thorns?
Usually, most Blackberry species, like wild, Kiowa, Darrow Thorny, Newberry, etc., bear pointed angular thorns on their stems. However, you can also find some thornless varieties like Apache, Chester, Arapaho, Tame, and many more. The angular thorns of the Blackberry plant protect it from herbivores.
Why are most blackberry plants still thorny?
Surprisingly, most blackberry plants still have thorns today, despite hundreds of years of human breeding. These blackberries are completely thornless, which makes them easier to harvest and cultivate. These plants also produce very large berries, a great option for those looking to save their seeds.
Why do blackberry bushes have thorns?
Because these native and wild blackberry bushes are typically thorny and rough fruits growing bushes known as the Bramble shrubs from the genus Rubus that mainly bear berries such as raspberries, dewberries, black raspberries, or blackberries. Therefore, blackberry bushes also have biennial stems wrapped up with thorns and grow with arching stems.
Do BlackBerry hybrids have thornless bushes?
But the developed blackberry hybrids have thornless bushes. Being one of the members of the berry family, blackberry bushes also have thorns present in them just like raspberries, dewberries, etc.
Are thornless blackberries better?
Thorny blackberry varieties generally grow more aggressively and are more resistant to disease than the thornless types, notes the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Sometimes, however, the berry flavor is reduced in the cultivated thornless varieties, advises Sunset. Consider the growth habit of the blackberry when selecting a cultivar.