WILD BLACKBERRIES (EUBATUS)



My berries cluster black and thick
For rich and poor alike to pick.
I’ll tear your dress, and cling, and tease,
And scratch your hand and arms and knees.

I’ll stain your fingers and your face,
And then I’ll laugh at your disgrace.
But when the bramble-jelly’s made,
You’ll find your trouble well repaid.

– THE SONG OF THE BLACKBERRY QUEEN
by Cicely Mary Barker

The wild blackberries have begun to ripen in the last weeks. The bramble sowed itself in the terrain vague of the work yard a couple of years ago, and I let it be even though it’s very pervasive. It grows to three metres (ten feet) at fast daily rates and will colonize large areas in a relatively short time. I wouldn’t recommend growing it in a small garden without having a machete in the tool shed. However, in the work yard, it’s surrounded by huge flagstones and a solid hoarding, which help holding it in check. It’s very much worth the effort, I think. Blackberries are exceptionally good in pies and cakes as well as in fruit salads and game sauces, if you can keep your fingers away from them on the way to the kitchen.

Some English people will tell you never to eat blackberries after October 11, because the Devil, allegedly, was kicked out of Heaven on that day. He landed, cursing and screaming, on a thorny blackberry bush and avenges himself on the same day every year by spitting on the berries, which should make them unfit for human consumption.