What is this plant that my friend gave me last year?
She told me it was a raspberry I think, but I don’t think it is, though it has similar-ish leaves. Last year it just stood still and didn’t grow, flower nor produce fruit. This year it has gone mad and has done the raspberry/blackberryish thing of sprouting up from the root.
I have put three pictures up on Flikr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/75073195@N00/527580612/ you could have a look and help me identify it. Unlike most raspberry or blackberries there are branches off the main stem. There are spikes on the stems and the undersides of the leaves, and right now it is covered with little berryish green things which I am thinking might be flower buds.
I was wondering if it was a gooseberry but I looked them up earlier and the leaves of the gooseberry are scarcely bigger than the berries. The leaves on my plant are blackberry/raspberry shaped but they are large - as big as the palm of my hand, some of them… They are also not rounded at the ends like those gooseberry leaves but jagged like raspberries or blackberries.
Hmm… The leaf is still too small and too rounded. It also says on another slide in that series that currants don’t have thorns. I wondered if it was a currant but as a kid I seem to remember that the leaves had a strong smell to them.
My bush has thorns on both leaves and stems (very small spiky ones), and big, sharply serrated leaves in a vine-type shape.
Keep trying please! I REALLY want to know what it is…
It could be some kind of raspberry or blackberry - the leaf forms are quite diverse in the cultivated varieties - I don’t think it’s a currant. However, the leaves look quite a bit like (grape)vine leaves to me, but vines have smooth stems on new growth.
Could you describe the spikes in a little more detail? Do they hook backward?
Ooh Colophon! I hope it isn’t that - it’s not nice to eat at all!
Mangetout, I just nipped out and took a series of photos of the plant again, this time paying attention to the leaves, their underside, the spikes and the fruit-y, bud-y things on it. Have a look and let me know what you think now.
Quite close, Bewildebeest, but the leaves are different, if I’ve seen right: palmate in the OP’s case, pinnate in salmonberry. Maybe a different species of Rubus.
