Wineberries

When I was a young girl, about this time of year we'd go wineberry picking.

Wineberries are an invasive species that are also good to eat. The berries are sweeter than a raspberry, though smaller, and animals love them.

We loved them too, and they were difficult to find. Since my father actively farmed, he did his best to keep things like wineberries from taking over fields. We found them on the edges of fields near forests, in gullies, and other places the mowing machine and herbicide sprayers couldn't reach.

Usually, we only found a few handfuls and ate them then and there, hot off the cane, juice running down our faces.

Fast forward to adulthood, and I found a few wineberry bushes on my husband's family farm, but not many. Not enough for even a handful, really.

This year, my brother shared that my father's property, which is no longer farmed but instead used to attract deer and other wildlife, was loaded with wineberries and blackberries.

He made pints and pints of wineberry jelly. He loves to cook and apparently likes to make jelly, too! He also generously brought me a big container full of wineberries simply for eating.

All mine just for eating! Yum.

This is a wineberry plant. The stalks have little hairs on them.

This is what a plant looks like after the wineberry has been picked or fallen off.

A close-up of the little hairs on the wineberry cane.

My brother's wineberry jelly, one with seeds, one without.

Wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius) are considered an invasive shrub in the same genus as raspberries and blackberries. The berry canes create thickets that reduce an area’s value for wildlife habitat and recreation. 

Wineberries were introduced to North America in the 1890s as breeding stock for raspberries. They originated in Japan and eastern Asia. 

By the 1970s it was invading natural areas, although it must have spread fast because my grandfather, who grew up in Botetourt in the early 1920s or thereabouts, had them growing on his farm by then because he told us what they were when we were children, and that was in the 1970s.

They may be invasive, but animals love them and depend on them now for food. And they sure make a nice afternoon snack!