Elmleaf blackberry

A vigorous scrambling bramble with long arching purple-red canes armed with curved prickles and leaves divided into three to five toothed leaflets. Native to Europe, North Africa and the Mediterranean, it forms dense impenetrable thickets along roadsides, walls and disturbed ground, and is one of the most aggressive invasive plants in the Azores.

• A single cane can root where its tip touches the ground, letting one plant march across a field without seed.
• Most blackberries reproduce by apomixis, producing seeds that are clones of the mother plant, which is why botanists recognise hundreds of microspecies.
• In the Azores it smothers native laurel-forest edges and is the target of ongoing eradication programmes.

Care
If you grow blackberries, cut out the canes that have fruited each winter and tie in the new ones, since each cane only fruits once.