- Thorns as protection for plants and fruit
- Modern cultivars and breeds without thorns
- Use thorny blackberry varieties profitably
- tips and tricks
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Wild blackberries protect their sweet fruits from overly greedy sweet tooths with a multitude of protective thorns. Therefore, the name blackberry originally comes from the derivation of an old word for thorn bush.
Thorns as protection for plants and fruit
With their thorns, wild blackberry tendrils have a defense mechanism that has been tried and tested for thousands of years. After all, the sweet blackberries do not grow on the tendrils as an end in themselves in the summertime, but serve to further propagate and spread. This can be achieved even more extensively if the seeds of the blackberry plants are taken up with the fruit by birds and then given away again far away with bird manure suitable as fertiliser. So the thorns act like reserving the fruit for the birds, as they deter and deter other animals and humans.
Modern cultivars and breeds without thorns
For commercial cultivation and garden culture, bramble vines with thorns mean not only the need for protective clothing and gloves, but always the occasional scratches and painful injuries. Therefore, in the last few decades, blackberry varieties have been bred that not only produce higher yields of larger fruit, but also have few or no thorns on the tendrils. A few decades ago, however, early breeding attempts such as the following varieties were of secondary importance and not quite frost hardy:
- thorn free
- Thornless Evergreen
- BlackDiamond
- Black Pearl
However, these taste and climatological disadvantages have been largely compensated for with newer breeds of blackberries without thorns, which include, for example:
- Navaho Bigandearly
- Little Black Prince
- Navaho Summerlong
- Tayberry
However, the Tayberry is not a blackberry in the classic sense, but a cross between blackberry and raspberry with rather red fruits.
Use thorny blackberry varieties profitably
Not all gardeners these days are inclined to use thornless bramble varieties. After all, blackberries are also used like a hedge as a natural fence, where the sharp thorns protect against unwanted intruders. For this purpose, the blackberry plants are planted in the garden along the property line on a trellis made of wooden pegs and tension wires, for which the Theodor Reimers variety is well suited.
tips and tricks
The proven blackberry variety Theodor Reimers is not thornless like thornless blackberries from modern breeds, but the variety combines the advantages of large and aromatic fruits with the defensiveness of wild blackberry tendrils.