Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: Late April to June.

Seed-time: Fruit ripe in June in southern part of its range, in July farther north.

Range: Newfoundland and Ontario to Lake Superior, southward to Virginia and Missouri.

Habitat: Upland fields, meadows, and pastures, fence rows, and waste places.

A variety of this plant, much improved by selection and cultivation, comes to our tables as the delicious "Lucretia Dewberry"; but the wild bramble, sprawling itself over acres of open uplands, is a pestiferous weed. Birds are very fond of the fruits and eat them to repletion, voiding the seeds unharmed, so that prickly young Dewberry shoots get mown with the hay of the meadows and keep turning up in the most unexpected places.

Stems prostrate, shrubby, very prickly, six to ten or more feet in length, with many small erect fruiting

Fig. 153. - Wild Dewberry branches, six inches to a foot high, all armed with sharp prickles. Leaves pinnately compound, with three to seven long-ovate or rhombic leaflets, on very slender and often prickly petioles, rather thin, prominently veined, finely double-toothed, dark green, taking on a gorgeous red coloring in autumn. Flowers in terminal clusters, or occasionally solitary, about an inch broad, with five-parted calyx and five obovate, white petals; stamens many; pistils many, closely set on a succulent "core" or torus which elongates as they mature, each becoming a small pulpy drupelet, containing one achene. These drupelets cohere and form the fruit, black, sweet, juicy, often an inch long, dropping readily from the stems when ripe. (Fig. 153.)

(Rubus villosus). X 1/6.

Means Of Control

The vines should be cut close to the ground, or, better, spudded off below the surface, before the fruit is formed, and then piled and burned. A handful of salt or a little kerosene on the cut surfaces is discouraging to new growth.