Rubus

Ornamental brambles are a huge, 1400+ genus of plants, spread across almost every country of the globe. Evergreen or deciduous shrubs, often prickly. Foliage very varied, flower 5-petalled and followed by fruits. R. idaeus is our familiar raspberry and R. fruticosus the common blackberry.

In some ways similar to the related genus Rosa, the rambling, scrambling habit of brambles provides safe breeding sites for robins and other songbirds, away from the clutches of cats and sparrowhawks; fertile forms produce berries that are eaten avidly by small mammals and birds; all have leaves that are the food of larval lepidoptera, ranging from the tiny leaf-miner Stigmella aurella to the enormous emperor moth. And then the flowers: as always the wildlife rule is that wild-type five-petalled flowers are the very best, with doubled forms promising everything but delivering little or nothing.