Blackberry
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Blackberry. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a fruit-bearing bramble. The blackberry and the raspberry are nearly akin. The fruit of each is composed of a mass of drupelets, each containing a seed. The raspberry may be pulled off, leaving a dry receptacle or core. The blackberry core is juicy and forms part of the fruit. Blackberry preserves, jam, and jelly, wine and blackberry cordial, an old-fashioned family remedy, are not unknown on the housekeeper's shelves. Our blackberries are native Americans. The blackberry is comparatively unknown in Europe. It has reached its prominence in the United States during the past half century. Among hints given by growers are a well drained soil, protection from drouth, avoidance of over-rich soil which produces cane rather than fruit, and cutting out the old canes as soon as they have borne fruit. If the old canes be burned promptly, most of the blackberry's insect enemies are destroyed. In a cold climate blackberries must be covered in the winter season. The leading nine states in blackberry growing are as follows; the yield is in quarts for the year in which the twelfth United States census was taken: Illinois 7,294,990 Michigan 5,324,110 Indiana 5,255,840 Missouri 5,121,860 Ohio 4,905,430 California 4,159,131 New Jersey 3,918,320 New York 3,167,090 Texas 2,701,750 See Raspberry ; Burbank
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a of the United States and in most parts plant common in the northern portions of Europe, and also in northern central Asia , having prickly stems, which somewhat resemble those of the raspberry. The flowers do not appear till the summer is considerably advanced, and the fruit ripens toward the end of it. Jelly and jam are made from the berries, and a very delicate wine. The blackberry is rarely cultivated, perhaps because it is in most districts so abundant in a wild Lawton, show the possibilities. state. One or two varieties, such as the bird, the turdus merula. Other English
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's claim in 1910 that "our blackberries are native Americans" and that the fruit "is comparatively unknown in Europe" was already contradicted by Collier's in 1921, and modern botany sides with Collier's: the European bramble, Rubus fruticosus, is an apomictic complex of hundreds of named microspecies, several hundred of them recorded in Britain alone. The crop has also moved: where the 1900 census put Illinois, Michigan and Indiana on top with a few million quarts each, commercial fresh blackberries now come largely from Mexico, with Oregon dominating the US processing crop, and the thornless erect cultivars bred at the University of Arkansas from the 1960s onward transformed picking. Where the bramble was carried abroad it became a pest rather than a crop, the Himalayan blackberry smothering large tracts of the Pacific Northwest and standing as a declared weed across much of Australia. The handheld device that borrowed the fruit's name for its drupelet-like keys outlived its own network: BlackBerry shut down service for its classic phones in 2022.
Written for this edition, 2026.