Blackberry Capital of the World

From a distance I watched the white truck slowly advance down the road. Suddenly it pulled over and stopped. Two people got out and waded into the ditch, pails in their hands. They soon returned to their truck and proceeded to their next stop. Along the fence grew blackberry vines covered in ripe purple fruits. It’s blackberry time!

Native blackberries have always grown in abundance throughout the area. People began cultivating the captivating beauties around McLoud. Both wild and farmed blackberry plants were dependable crops. The McLoud Blackberry Association was formed. Why not capitalize on the blackberry. All the juicy fruit needed was some publicity. A box of the best McLoud blackberries was shipped to then President Harry S. Truman. He was so pleased and declared McLoud Oklahoma the official Blackberry Capital of the World in 1949!

McLoud Oklahoma was founded in 1895. The McLoud Blackberry Festival began in 1942 and continues today as one of the longest running festivals in Oklahoma. This year the festival was modified to one day. A drive through system directed people to the old school parking lot where they could purchase fresh blackberries, jams or t-shirts from their vehicles. The exit was a different street. The 78th annual Blackberry Pageant, although closed to the public, was held and winners later announced on social media. Fireworks that night concluded the festival.

The famous blackberry (Rubus species) is one of the easier plants to grow, but needs to be controlled since this member of the rose family has a great tendency to conquer the world one stem at a time. Blackberries do grow worldwide.

The blackberry plant likes full sun and whatever soil, but thrives with fairly decent drainage. The brambles are rapid colonizers of waste places, fields and fences. The stems may stand straight up, bend over or give into gravity and trail along the ground. Wherever stems touch soil, roots can develop and voila, a new plant. Suckers can spring up from the roots. Cuttings of stems buried in loose loamy soil turn into mighty fine berry bushes. Don’t forget the goal of the blackberry is to form an impressive thicket.

Plant blackberry bushes as protective fences or borders around gardens. One and two-year old blackberry stems have prickles, not thorns. Thorns are modified branches, spines are modified leaves, and prickles sprout from the epidermis. Prickles are comparable to hairs….very sharp formidable hairs…..on blackberry stems more like thin strands of barbed-wire.

Some blackberries are self-fertile. All benefit from bee pollination. Technically the fruit is not a berry but an aggregate fruit composed of several ovaries all squeezed together around a central receptacle called a torus. To distinguish between a black raspberry and blackberry, pick a berry. If the torus remains within the berry, it is a blackberry.

The first-year blackberry stem, the primocane, grows and grows. In the second year the primocane stops growing and turns into a floricane to produce flowers and fruit. In 1908 the first thornless blackberry stem was found growing within a single blackberry bush in California by Charles Beede. There are now six varieties. In 1997 Dr. John Clark, University of Arkansas, discovered a fruit-bearing primocane. The first of those primocanes came to market in 2004. Four fruiting varieties are now available.

The loganberry, a blackberry-raspberry hybrid, was created in 1880. Boysenberry was developed in the late 1920’s by Californian horticulturist Rudolph Boysen. Its’ ancestry includes the European raspberry and blackberry, the American Dewberry (our low-growing early spring wild blackberry), and the loganberry. The Marionberry is a 1956 Oregon blackberry hybrid. The Scottish Tayberry, another blackberry-raspberry cross, took five years of selective breeding before reaching the market in 1979.

Don’t plant blackberries in soils that have grown tomatoes, potatoes, peppers or eggplants. All these plants are vulnerable to Verticillium wilt, soil fungi that block the water conducting tubes. Blackberries can be affected by springtime Anthracnose fungal lesions, witches’ broom rosette fungus, mildews, and rusts.

Without any help, the native Oklahoma blackberry, Rubus oklahomus, grows in the eastern half of Oklahoma, north-central Texas and Arkansas. Squirrels, bunnies, birds, and deer eat or shelter in the thickets. Chiggers, multi-colored larvae of trombiculid mites, lie in wait. They hide in large groups less than a foot off the ground within grass, leaves or plants. The arachnids come alive when the ground temps reach 77-86 degrees. Our soil temps are in the mid-80’s.

You’ve been warned.

Read the OSU Fact Sheet HLA-6215 “Blackberry and Raspberry Culture for the Home Garden” at https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/blackberry-and-raspberry-culture-for-the-home-garden.html