A taste from the east

When I mentioned picking Japanese wineberries in an earlier post, many of you showed an interest in them and so I thought that I would devote a post just to them.

Rubus phoenicolasius or Japanese wineberry as you would guess from the name is native to Japan but also China and Korea.

It was original introduced to Europe and North America as an ornamental plant.

It has reddish stems and lime green leaves which are rather attractive.

The stems are actually green but covered in red hairs which give it the reddish look. The hairs are glandular which means they have glands at the top which in the case of the wineberry are sticky.

The stems also have a few thorns but they are nothing like as vicious or in the numbers worn by the tayberry and brambles.

We planted our wineberry back in 2011 when we were on the lookout for something a little usually and we spotted it on the Victoriana Nursery Gardens website.

To be honest it didn't really do very much in the first few years. I don't know whether it wasn't happy or maybe we didn't treat it well. It's described as invasive but it certainly wasn't living up to its name.

The clusters of flowers buds appear in late spring.

Like the stems the calyxes that protect the developing flower buds are covered with sticky hairs. The hairs on the stems and buds are defence mechanisms which entrap any would-be sucking bugs. 

When the flower buds open in late spring the calyx peels back to allow safe access to pollinators.

Once the flower has been pollinated the calyx closes to protect the developing fruit.

As the fruit develops the calyces reopen.

The fruits gradually turn from yelow to a deep red.

Once picked the berries leave an orange and white core behind which itself is quite attractive.

The small 'berries' like most of the rest of the plant are sticky which probably deters any birds from browsing them.

Japanese wineberries grow like a blackberry or tayberry and produce fruit on one year old canes so I will cut out all the canes that fruit this year and tie in the newly produced canes.

If you harvest enough berries they can be used in cooking like raspberries.

I have read all sorts of descriptions about the fruit such as 'strong raspberry flavour that pops with sherbet', 'juicier than a raspberry', 'raspberry with a hint of grape', 'sweet yet tart'. The list goes on. To experience the full flavour you need to leave the berries until they become a very deep dark red. (It's just as well that the birds aren't tempted by them). At this stage they have a pronounced raspberry flavour. Picked earlier they have a slight taste of wine. 

If you grow them what do you think they taste like?

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett