Elm-leaf blackberry

Description

Rubus ulmifolius is a species of wild blackberry known by the English common name elmleaf blackberry or thornless blackberry and the Spanish common name zarzamora. It is native to Europe and North Africa, and has also become naturalized in parts of the United States (especially California), Australia, and southern South America. Rubus ulmifolius is a brambly shrub sometimes as much as 5 meters (almost 17 feet) tall, sometimes with spines but not always. Leaves are palmately compound with 3 or 5 leaflets, the leaflets green on the upper surface but white on the underside because of a dense layer of woolly hairs. Flowers are usually pink, sometimes white. The fruit is a compound drupe, dark purple, almost black. Rubus ulmifolius is found in its native range across Western Europe, from the Netherlands south to Spain and Portugal, in Britain and Ireland, as well as NW Africa. It is naturalised in North America, Australasia and South Africa. In Britain and Ireland it is a plant of hedges and woodland edges on calcareous soils.