Lately the garden media has been buzzing about a wonderful new plant. Acquire it and in one swoop you have checked off all the boxes on the fashionable garden requirements sheet—sustainability, native origins, attracts wildlife, low maintenance, looks good and smells good. Get one and you can feel horticulturally sanctified for an entire season.
The name on the tongues of savvy plantsmen everywhere is Rubus odoratus. Native plant people call this shrubby specimen “thimbleberry.” Garden writers generally refer to it as flowering raspberry. It grows wild all over the place in its native range, which is most of eastern North America. You can find it in the same hedgerows and untended rural spaces as its thorny cousins, wild raspberries and blackberries.
If you have ever noticed those thorny cousins, you know that they have pretty little five-petaled white flowers in the spring. Domestic raspberry and blackberry varieties have them too—only bigger and showier. The five-petaled flowers look a little like single roses, which is logical, because raspberries and blackberries are members of the large, far-flung rose or Rosaceae family.
Thimbleberry flowers look more like roses than raspberry blooms. The have the family’s hallmark five-petal configuration, but are almost as large as cultivated roses and bloom in a shade of deep rose-purple accented by a cluster of golden stamens in the middle. Most people don’t stop to smell them because they don’t know what they are. However, if you happen to hover over a blooming thimbleberry bush, you will notice a rosy scent.
To harvest wild raspberries or blackberries, you have to pay the price—being snagged by thorns many times over. Protective clothing helps, but it is impossible to get more than a few berries without also getting a few scratches. Thimbleberry does not have that problem because the shoots and branches are free of thorns.
The purple flowers bloom on and off from June through August, attracting various pollinating insects. They don’t seem to last very well as cut flowers, so it is better to leave the indoor glory to cultivated roses and let these relatives strut their stuff outdoors.
Nobody really notices raspberry or blackberry leaves, but thimbleberries feature significant foliage. The leaves are large and lobed, reminiscent of maple or sycamore leaves, with a velvety appearance. They make the bushes stand out, even when they have nary a flower on them.
Great beauties always have little flaws—a mole or a minute space between teeth—that add to their distinction. Thimbleberry has them too. The seedy fruits, which are red and—not surprisingly—thimble-shaped are sour at best and tasteless at worst. They also have a crumbly texture. Birds seem to like them and some guidebooks say they can be made into tasty jams and pies. Given the choice, I would rather eat wild raspberries and leave the thimbleberries to the denizens of the wild kingdom that use my garden as a habitat.
Thimbleberries also need space, as they grow between three and six feet tall, with an equal or greater spread. As with many plants, they can be kept in more limited bounds. If you don’t care about the berries, clip back flowering branches by at least one third after the flowers have fallen. Prune out unwanted canes so that you don’t end up with a thimbleberry thicket.
If you are into sustainability and need plants that will do more than just look beautiful and entrance the blue jays, thimbleberry is your ticket. The fruits can be used to make a blue dye. The leaves, roots and branches all have astringent qualities and can be processed into remedies for a whole host of ailments. Fortunately, the vast majority of us can save our thimbleberry plants for ornamental purposes. Most of those ailments are easily cured these days with cheap, over-the-counter products that don’t have to be dug, boiled, strained or decocted.
If you are sold on thimbleberry’s many virtues, make a note now in your garden planner. After the holidays, order it from Forestfarm, P.O. Box 1, Williams, Oregon 97544-9599; (541) 846-7269; www.forestfarm.com. Catalog $5.00.