From The New York Times…
Urban Forager | It’s Prime Time for Black Raspberries
By Ava Chin
Sweet, tart and thimble-shaped, black raspberries resemble the red supermarket variety, only they are smaller and give a greater punch to the palate. This time of year, black raspberries are ripe and abundant throughout the city and the metropolitan area, growing wild along the side of the road, on parkland and in neighbors’ backyards.
Black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis), a k a black cap or blackcap raspberry, is native to the eastern and central United States, and can be found as far west as Colorado. (They are more common in our area than red raspberries.)
A thorny, bushy perennial, the black raspberry has palmate leaves that grow in three to five leaflets, and, like red raspberry leaves, are characteristically silvery white underneath. The small, tangy fruit ranges from the color of dark, mulled wine to purplish-black when mature, and like all raspberries, it has a hollow core. In addition to eating the fruit, various American Indian groups like the Cherokee and Chippewa have used black raspberry leaves and roots medicinally as a gastrointestinal aid, and to ease childbirth and menstrual cramps.
The black raspberry bush has thin, arching canes that grow as high as eight feet and bend back toward the ground, rerooting where they settle, so the plant sometimes resembles a tangle of giant croquet wickets. In upstate New York, I once found myself in a black raspberry patch that was so thick and thorny, it reminded me of the thorn forest surrounding the castle in the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty.”
Growing up, I associated raspberries with cough medicine and overly sweetened jams, until I had my first taste of wild black raspberries a couple of years ago from a friend’s backyard in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Though it is possible to make wonderful tarts or even alcoholic beverages from Rubus occidentalis — Chambord Liqueur Royale de France and bokbunja, a Korean fruit wine, are based on black raspberries — I’ve never managed to do anything except eat them out of my hand.
If you’re lucky enough to have friends with black raspberry bushes, now is the time to start collecting.
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