Lately the garden media has been buzzing about a wonderful new plant.\u00a0 Acquire it and in one swoop you have checked off all the boxes on the fashionable garden requirements sheet\u2014sustainability, native origins, attracts wildlife, low maintenance, looks good and smells good.\u00a0 Get one and you can feel horticulturally sanctified for an entire season.<\/p>\n
The name on the tongues of savvy plantsmen everywhere is Rubus odoratus.\u00a0 Native plant people call this shrubby specimen \u201cthimbleberry.\u201d\u00a0 Garden writers generally refer to it as flowering raspberry.\u00a0 It grows wild all over the place in its native range, which is most of eastern North America.\u00a0 You can find it in the same hedgerows and untended rural spaces as its thorny cousins, wild raspberries and blackberries.<\/p>\n
If you have ever noticed those thorny cousins, you know that they have pretty little five-petaled white flowers in the spring.\u00a0 Domestic raspberry and blackberry varieties have them too\u2014only bigger and showier.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Thimbleberry flowers look more like roses than raspberry blooms.\u00a0 The have the family\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Most people don\u2019t stop to smell them because they don\u2019t know what they are.\u00a0 However, if you happen to hover over a blooming thimbleberry bush, you will notice a rosy scent.<\/p>\n
To harvest wild raspberries or blackberries, you have to pay the price\u2014being snagged by thorns many times over.\u00a0 Protective clothing helps, but it is impossible to get more than a few berries without also getting a few scratches.\u00a0 Thimbleberry does not have that problem because the shoots and branches are free of thorns.<\/p>\n
The purple flowers bloom on and off from June through August, attracting various pollinating insects.\u00a0 They don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Nobody really notices raspberry or blackberry leaves, but thimbleberries feature significant foliage.\u00a0 The leaves are large and lobed, reminiscent of maple or sycamore leaves, with a velvety appearance.\u00a0 They make the bushes stand out, even when they have nary a flower on them.<\/p>\n
Great beauties always have little flaws\u2014a mole or a minute space between teeth\u2014that add to their distinction.\u00a0 Thimbleberry has them too.\u00a0 The seedy fruits, which are red and\u2014not surprisingly\u2014thimble-shaped are sour at best and tasteless at worst.\u00a0 They also have a crumbly texture.\u00a0 Birds seem to like them and some guidebooks say they can be made into tasty jams and pies.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Thimbleberries also need space, as they grow between three and six feet tall, with an equal or greater spread.\u00a0 As with many plants, they can be kept in more limited bounds.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t care about the berries, clip back flowering branches by at least one third after the flowers have fallen.\u00a0 Prune out unwanted canes so that you don\u2019t end up with a thimbleberry thicket.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The fruits can be used to make a blue dye.\u00a0 The leaves, roots and branches all have astringent qualities and can be processed into remedies for a whole host of ailments.\u00a0 Fortunately, the vast majority of us can save our thimbleberry plants for ornamental purposes.\u00a0 Most of those ailments are easily cured these days with cheap, over-the-counter products that don\u2019t have to be dug, boiled, strained or decocted.<\/p>\n
If you are sold on thimbleberry\u2019s many virtues, make a note now in your garden planner.\u00a0 After the holidays, order it from Forestfarm, P.O. Box 1, Williams, Oregon 97544-9599; (541) 846-7269; www.forestfarm.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Catalog $5.00.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lately the garden media has been buzzing about a wonderful new plant.\u00a0 Acquire it and in one swoop you have checked off all the boxes on the fashionable garden requirements sheet\u2014sustainability, native origins, attracts wildlife, low maintenance, looks good and smells good.\u00a0 Get one and you can feel horticulturally sanctified for an entire season. The … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[489,491,448,488,487,490,486],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-flowering-raspberry","tag-flowering-shrubs","tag-native-plants","tag-rose-family","tag-rubus-odoratus","tag-sour-raspberry","tag-thimbleberry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}