Raspberry

Raspberry plants are usually perennials which give biennial stems or 'canes'.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Rubus idaeus
Family: 
Roses
Family Latin name: 
Rosaceae
Category: 
Flowering Plants

Species description

Species description

Raspberry plants are usually perennials which give biennial stems or 'canes'. They are tall plants (up to 1.5 metres). Their unbranched, pale stems have weak prickles. Leaves, appearing in leaflets of 5 to 7, are oval and clearly much paler beneath. White flowers in small clusters, if lucky, produce edible - and delicious - red fruit.

The above characteristics distinguish them from Brambles, notably in the colour of the undersides of the leaves and in the prickles which, for raspberry plants, one would not call vicious!

The one shown in the photographs on this page are from a single plant that was first noticed in August 2024. Its location in the deep shade of the Yew tree along the southern boundary may indicate why it's perhaps not likely to fruit. (Raspberry plants like sunshine if they are to succeed in bearing fruit.) It may also indicate that it was 'seeded' by a bird pausing on one of the Yew's branches above.

The presence of this unplanted plant in the cemetery is yet another example of nature abhorring a vacuum.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)

Details

Species family information

The Rose family gives us many of our most commercially important fruits, such as the Prunus species. They have alternate leaves and 5-petalled flowers.

Category information

Nucleic multicellular photosynthetic organisms lived in freshwater communities on land as long ago as a thousand million years, and their terrestrial descendants are known from the late Pre-Cambrian 850 million years ago. Embryophyte land plants are known from the mid Ordovician, and land plant structures such as roots and leaves are recognisable in mid Devonian fossils. Seeds seem to have evolved by the late Devonian. The Embryophytes are green land plants that form the bulk of the Earth’s vegetation. They have specialised reproductive organs and nurture the young embryo sporophyte. Most obtain their energy by photosynthesis, using sunlight to synthesise food from Carbon Dioxide and Water.

The earliest known plant group is the Archaeplastida, which were autotrophic. Listing just the surviving descendants, which evolved in turn, we have the Red Algae, the Chlorophyte Green Algae, the Charophyte Green Algae, and then the Embryophyta or land plants. The earliest embryophytes were the Liverworts, followed by the Hornworts, and the Mosses. Then we have the Vascular Plants, the Lycophytes and Ferns, followed by the Spermatophytes or seed plants, the Gnetophytes, Conifers, Ginkgos, and Cycads, and finally the Magnoliophyta (Angiosperms) or flowering plants.