Black raspberry

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part sun

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

4 ft

Habit

Deciduous bramble of arching, prickly, biennial canes that grows as a clump, or hill, and roots where cane tips touch the ground

Care tips

•

Start with plants certified virus-free and clear wild or abandoned brambles from around the patch; the University of Minnesota Extension says raspberry viruses cannot be cured.

•

Plant on well-drained ground, in raised rows if your soil is heavy: Phytophthora crown and root rot thrives in wet soil.

•

Pinch the tips of new canes at 24 to 30 inches in summer so they branch, then shorten the side branches to 12 to 18 inches in early spring, as the University of Minnesota Extension describes.

Lifecycle

Planting

Buy plants certified virus-free from an established nursery, as the University of Minnesota Extension advises, and kill old or wild raspberries near the site the season before; it says viruses cannot be cured once in a planting. Plant bare-root canes in April or May as soon as the soil can be worked, or potted plants after frost, in rich, well-drained soil with compost worked in, and set black raspberries 4 feet apart. Avoid heavy, waterlogged ground, which invites Phytophthora root rot, or plant in raised rows. Light is a trade-off: the University of Minnesota Extension says full sun gives the most fruit and part shade less, while NC State Extension says it prefers partial sun and moist, highly organic soil, that fruit may not develop in a sunny, dry site without enough rain, and that canes in too much shade fail to set fruit.

Transplanting

Move plants while dormant in spring, spreading the roots out in the planting hole, as the University of Minnesota Extension describes. A rooted cane tip can be cut from the parent and replanted; Plants For A Future plants tip layers out in autumn.

Early growth

Water regularly from spring through harvest: the University of Minnesota Extension says the roots sit in the top 24 inches of soil and need 1 to 1.5 inches of water a week from flowering until harvest. When new canes reach 24 to 30 inches, pinch out their tips to make them branch, which it says makes picking easier and raises the crop. Tie the canes to a support so their tips do not arch down and root.

Maturity

NC State Extension gives 3 to 6 feet tall and 4 to 8 feet wide; the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center gives 3 to 8 feet tall and 6 to 12 feet wide, the Flora of North America 1.6 to 8.2 feet, and Plants For A Future 9.8 feet. Each cane fruits in its second summer and then dies, so cut fruited canes to the ground after harvest; in early spring keep 4 to 5 canes per hill and shorten their side branches to 12 to 18 inches, as the University of Minnesota Extension describes. Its raspberry cane disease guide says anthracnose is most severe on black raspberries: small sunken pale spots with purple edges on the canes, spread by splashing water, managed by open, narrow plantings, removing old canes and drip watering. The University of Minnesota Extension also lists gray mold on the fruit, Phytophthora crown and root rot in wet soil, spotted wing drosophila, Japanese beetles and cane borers, and rabbits that eat the canes in winter. NC State Extension says it has few problems other than honey fungus, names the raspberry cane borer and rednecked cane borer, and rates it moderately resistant to deer.

Propagation

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center lists division, tip layering and digging suckers as the usual methods, though the University of Minnesota Extension says black raspberries do not make root suckers; the canes root at the tips instead. Plants For A Future gives tip layering in July, planting out in autumn, and cuttings of half-ripe wood in July and August. Seed is slower: the Wildflower Center says the hard seed coat needs scarification and often warm and then cold stratification, and Plants For A Future sows stratified seed in a cold frame in early autumn.

Pollination

Self-fertile

Plants For A Future records hermaphrodite, insect-pollinated, self-fertile flowers, so a single plant can fruit. The University of Minnesota Extension says bumblebees, honeybees and other wild bees are excellent pollinators of brambles, and that the more bees work the flowers, the more fruit you harvest.

Plants don't grow alone

Pollinates

Bee

European honeybee (Apis mellifera)

The University of Minnesota Extension names honeybees among the excellent pollinators of brambles, and the Wildflower Center, citing the Xerces Society, lists special value to honey bees.

Pollinates

Bee

Common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens)

The University of Minnesota Extension names bumblebees as excellent bramble pollinators and the Wildflower Center lists special value to bumble bees, without naming a species. The common eastern bumble bee shares the plant's eastern North American range.

Fruit forage

Bird

Eastern songbirds (multi-species) (multiple species (Passeriformes))

NC State Extension says songbirds eat the fruit, and birds eat seeds left from rotted fruit in winter; the Wildflower Center rates its wildlife value very high for songbirds.

Shelter / habitat

Bee

Stem-nesting native bees (multiple genera (Ceratina, Hylaeus, Osmia, etc.))

NC State Extension says native bees nest in the dead, hollow stems, and suggests cutting dead stems back to 12 to 24 inches and leaving them standing; the Wildflower Center lists nesting material or structure for native bees.

For people

Edible

Grown for its berries. NC State Extension says the purple-black fruits are sweet and slightly tart, detach cleanly from their cores, and are eaten raw or cooked, as a topping, filling or jam; the Flora of North America calls this species the source of most cultivated black raspberries. NC State Extension and Plants For A Future add that the young shoots can be peeled and eaten raw or cooked like rhubarb, and that a tea is made from the leaves or the root bark. No source cited here reports a toxicity hazard; the hazard is physical, since the canes carry sharp prickles.

Native range

Native

Naturalized

Native across 35 US states + 3 CA provinces; naturalized in 1 US state.

Worldwide native range.

Native ecoregions

Naturally belongs in 21 ecoregions - its native range crosses a state or province each one spans (not necessarily this exact habitat).

Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Canadian Aspen forests and parklands

Central Tallgrass prairie

Colorado Rockies forests

Cross-Timbers savanna-woodland

Eastern Canadian Forest-Boreal transition

Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests

Flint Hills tallgrass prairie

A native eastern + central North American thicket-forming shrub producing arching thorny canes + clusters of large sweet black berries in mid-to-late summer. Among the most important wildlife fruit producers in eastern forests - birds, mammals, + insects all depend on the fruit. Like raspberry, biennial-caned (primocane year 1, fruits in year 2 as floricane, then dies back). Spreads via root suckers + tip-rooting cane tips; manage with annual pruning.

Climate notes

•

NC State Extension lists Rubus occidentalis for USDA hardiness zones 4a-8b, the range used here. Plants For A Future gives zones 3 to 7, which is not used: the Flora of North America records it growing wild south into Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, and the University of Minnesota Extension rates its recommended black raspberry varieties only fair to poor for hardiness in zones 4 and 3, best in protected sites and the south of that state. NC State Extension tags it heat tolerant.

•

The native range here is taken from Kew's World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), the dataset POWO publishes: eastern and central North America, from New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario south through New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and west through the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes states to Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. WCVP lists it as introduced in Colorado and in Germany, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, and central European Russia. None of the sources here calls it invasive, and Plants For A Future rates its weed potential as no.

•

The state list here keeps the states WCVP records as native and adds Colorado, which the Flora of North America includes in the native range; the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and USDA PLANTS also count it native there, while WCVP treats it as an introduction. Prince Edward Island is left out: the Wildflower Center and USDA PLANTS list it, but neither WCVP nor the Flora of North America does.

•

The Flora of North America describes its wild home as woodlands, fields, prairies, meadows, savannas and disturbed ground in dry to moist soil, up to 3,281 feet, and the Wildflower Center adds bluffs, thickets, stream banks, roadsides and pastures. NC State Extension says it is common in the North Carolina mountains but scarce in the Piedmont and coastal plain.

•

Sources differ on when it flowers: the Flora of North America gives late April to July, the Wildflower Center May and June, NC State Extension April to June in its notes and spring and summer in its attributes, and Plants For A Future June. NC State gives June and July for the fruit.

•

Soil: Plants For A Future lists mildly acid, neutral and mildly alkaline soils, from sand to clay, as long as they drain well; the Wildflower Center gives acid gravelly or sandy loams with a high tolerance of lime; NC State Extension gives moist soil high in organic matter that is occasionally dry.

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Rubus allegheniensis

Allegheny blackberry

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

An upright, multi-stemmed, rhizomatous deciduous shrub of the western U.S. and Canada, named for its showy, fragrant yellow-to-orange spring flowers. Glossy lobed leaves turn reddish-purple in fall, and the spring bloom gives way to edible black currants by mid to late summer. Tough and adaptable - it tolerates dry to seasonally flooded soils, poor and clay soils, drought, and erosion, and the flowers and fruit feed hummingbirds, butterflies, and birds.

A deciduous edible shrub for acidic soils, spring flowers, summer berries, pollinator value, and strong fall color.

A rounded, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub native across eastern and central North America, grown for its edible nuts and its season-opening catkins. Showy 2-3 inch yellowish-brown male catkins dangle from bare branches in early spring before the ovate, double-toothed leaves emerge; small egg-shaped edible nuts ripen inside leafy husks by mid- to late summer. Easygoing in average soil and tolerant of clay and black walnut, it suckers into thickets that screen and shelter wildlife.

A small native tree with white spring flowers, edible summer berries, and copper to red fall color.

Amelanchier canadensis

Canadian serviceberry