[FLPERMACULTURE] a curiosity in my garden

[Marty Hiller]

I've been cultivating a "volunteer" gold raspberry in my garden the  
past couple years, which looks like a larger and more vigorous  
relative of the black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis.) When I  
mentioned it last year to Katie, she sounded surprised that it was  
propagating from tips instead of runners, and I finally this  
afternoon got round to looking it up. I learned that tip propagation  
is a distinctive property of the native Blackcap family, which is  
quite different from the other raspberry varieties. I was unable to  
find a commercially available "gold cap", but I did find a mention of  
it in Wikipedia:



"The commercially grown red and black raspberry species each have  
albino-like pale-fruited variants, generally due to expression of  
recessive genes affecting production of anthocyanin pigments.  
Variously called golden raspberries, yellow raspberries, or (rarely)  
orange raspberries, these fruits retain the distinctive flavor of  
their respective species, despite their similarity of appearance. In  
the eastern United States, at least, most commercially sold pale- 
fruited raspberries are derivatives of red raspberries. Yellow- 
fruited variants of the black raspberry occur occasionally as wild  
plants (for example, in Ohio), and are sometimes grown in home gardens."



The fruit is, indeed, as luscious as a blackcap, but they do have a  
couple of downsides. One is that they get little dark spots on them  
when they're a tad bit overripe (caused by individual drupelets  
drying out around the seed,) and the other is that they propagate  
*very* aggressively, which makes it hard to maintain a small patch of  
them. It also means that I have *extra*, if you want to try some.



- Marty




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