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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Wildlife like birds, deer, and other hunters are scared off by the thorns, so they don’t 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?
Genetics determine whether a blackberry plant has thorns or not. 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
Blackberries in the wild are always thorny, but blackberries grown in gardens can be thorny or not. Thornlessness is controlled by specific genes introduced through selective breeding. Picking blackberries that don’t have spines makes them much easier to grow and pick. But even thorny types can be handled well with training and protection. When picking plants to add these tasty berries to your garden, give your choices a lot of thought.
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 fresh blackberries are only available for a short time, and they can be pricey if you don’t buy them from a trustworthy local farmer.
It costs a lot because blackberries are one of the easiest fruits to grow, but picking and growing them still takes a lot of work, especially if you don’t use commercial fertilizers and pesticides.
But you don’t just want pints of local blackberries to enjoy during the summer; you need gallons of them to can, bake, and eat right off the bush. 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:
- If you look at the name, you can tell that these blackberries have thorns—the kind that are so sharp they can tear your jeans. The canes stand “erect,” which means they don’t need anything to hold them up, like trellises or other plants.
- Blackberries that stand up straight without thorns are now available. These guys can stand up on their own and won’t rip your face off. Win!.
- Blackberries that trail off and don’t have thorns need to be trained to keep their 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. Birds love berries so much! To keep birds from eating your bramble, drape it with bird netting. We’ve used this before and it works, but it’s a pain to take down at the end of the season because it gets tangled up with the plant, and it’s not good to throw away. Keeping other, more appealing plants and leaving them for the birds is another option. That’s why we leave wild blackberries on the edges of our property. You can also beat the birds at their own game by picking your blackberries early every 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. We get a good harvest, so I don’t use any pesticides on them. I just kind of live with them and the scream I let out every once in a while when I pick a junebug instead of a berry.
- Mice and Snakes. Thus far, these two animals have not caused us any harm. However, they might if you let the grass grow too high around your bushes or if you don’t pick your berries quickly enough before they fall to the ground. (Dropped berries can attract mice, which then attract snakes. Just in case, make sure to wear closed shoes and long pants when you harvest.
- Yellow Jackets, Wasps, etc. Yet another reason to always wear boots. There is a chance that these bugs will hang out and even build a nest near your bramble if you leave holes and/or a lot of berries to rot on the ground. Keep the area cleared and filled in, and when picking berries, always wear clothes that will protect you.
- Thorns. If you’ve got a thorny variety, that is. There’s no doubt that those thorns can rip through skin as well as denim. I think you should wear long sleeves and gloves when picking 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?
When Will the Berries Grow? *Type of Berry PlantYears Until Fruit*Blackberry Plants 1-2 yearsBlueberry Plants 2–3 yearsBosenberry Plants 2–3 yearsCranberry 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?
As a result, these native and wild blackberry bushes are usually thorny and rough. They are Bramble shrubs from the genus Rubus, and they mostly bear berries like blackberries, raspberries, dewberries, or raspberries. 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?
The Alabama Cooperative Extension System says that blackberries with thorns tend to grow faster and are less likely to get diseases than those without thorns. 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.