Blackberry Production and Cultivar Situation in North America

Abstract

Wild species of blackberry are indigenous in most temperate areas of the northern hemisphere and are usually the most abundant of wild fruits (2). Strangely, blackberries are among the more recent fruits to be domesticated, being largely developed as a cultivated crop in the latter half of the 19th Century. The abundance and ayailability of wild blackberries may have made early cultivation unnecessary. More likely, the thorny, unmanageable character of most wild blackberries created a prejudice against them as a garden fruit, and this prejudice was brought to the New World by the pioneers from Europe (2).