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By Bo Friberg
Published 1989
Blackberries are available fresh through the summer and are also sold frozen or canned. Loganberries, boysenberries, and olallieberries are all hybrids of blackberries. Fresh berries are excellent for decorating and for use in fruit salads, tarts, and pies. Dewberries are the “other” blackberry; they are not as common, but they look and taste so much like blackberries that, after harvest, they are really indistinguishable. It is easy to tell the difference before the berries are picked, however, because dewberries grow on trailing brambles along the ground, whereas the common blackberry grows on an erect woody plant that looks very similar to its close relation, the raspberry. The various cross-breeds and hybrids can be very confusing, and not just among the blackberry varieties but also because blackberries (rubus fruticous) are themselves a hybrid of raspberries (rubus idaeus). All of these berries belong, botanically, to the rose family. To add to the confusion (and interest), there are also black-colored raspberries and red-colored blackberries! One sure way of distinguishing between blackberries and raspberries is to look very closely at their skin; raspberries have a slightly hairy exterior (the word rasp can be used as a verb to mean “to rub with something rough”), while the surface of blackberries is shiny and smooth. Another difference is that, when harvested, blackberries retain the part of the stem that connected them to the plant, whereas raspberries have a hollow end because their center stem remains attached to the end of the branch. (This is not an absolute rule, and it applies more to homegrown fruit, as commercially grown blackberries have their centers removed before they are packaged and shipped.)
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