General:
Medium to tall, coarse shrub, 2-5 m or more long, thicket-forming; stems 5-15 mm in diameter, erect to ascending, then high-arching, sprawling and trailing along the ground, some rooting at the ends, five-angled, with stout, flattened, hooked prickles al

Leaves:
Alternate, evergreen, palmately compound, 5-20 cm long; leaflets 5 on first-year canes, mostly 3 on flowering canes, egg-shaped, 5-12 cm long, double-saw-toothed and abruptly sharp-pointed at the tip, green and smooth above, greyish-woolly beneath, the leaf-stalks and midveins beneath prickly; stipules linear.

Flowers:
Inflorescence of 5 to 20 stalked flowers in open, terminal or axillary clusters, the stalks woolly and prickly; corollas white to pinkish, the petals 5, spreading, egg-shaped, 10-15 mm long; calyces woolly, 5-lobed, the lobes lanceolate, bent back, 8-12 mm long; ovaries superior; stamens 100 or more.

Fruits:
Drupelets, smooth, coherent in a black nearly globe-shaped cluster that falls with the fleshy receptacle (a blackberry), the berries 1-1.5 cm wide.

If more than one illustration is available for a species (e.g., separate illustrations were provided for two subspecies) then links to the separate images will be provided below. Note that individual subspecies or varietal illustrations are not always available.