General: Trailing shrub, 2-5 m or more long; stems barely woody, 2-10 mm in diameter, arching, sprawling and trailing along the ground, some rooting at the tip, with slender, straight to slightly recurved prickles, somewhat hairy when young becoming smooth and glaucous; flowering branches ascending, to 50 cm tall.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, pinnately compound, 5-15 cm long; leaflets 3 (rarely 5), narrowly to broadly egg-shaped, 3-10 cm long, coarsely double-saw-toothed, green and smooth or nearly so on both surfaces, the terminal leaflet largest and often deeply 3-lobed to divided, the leaf-stalks and midveins beneath fine-prickly; stipules linear, 8-11 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence of few stalked flowers in small, open, flat-topped terminal clusters, the stalks often purplish stalked-glandular; male and female flowers on separate plants; corollas white, the petals 5, spreading, elliptic and 8-11 mm long in female flowers, lanceolate and 12-17 mm long in male flowers; calyces woolly and usually stalked-glandular, sometimes fine-prickly, 5-lobed, the lobes lanceolate, spreading to bent back, 7-11 mm long; ovaries superior; stamens 75 to 100.
Fruits: Drupelets, generally smooth, coherent in a black oblong to nearly globe-shaped cluster that falls with the fleshy receptacle (a blackberry), the berries 1-1.5 cm long.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
A shade-tolerant/intolerant, submontane to montane, Western North American deciduous shrub distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran region. Occurs in maritime to submaritime cool mesothermal climates on moderately dry to fresh. nitrogen-medium soils; its occurrence decreases with increasing elevation and continentality. Common but scattered in forest understories on disturbed, water-shedding sites. often plentiful in disturbed and early seral communities on cutover-and/or burnt sites. Usually associated with Anaphalis margaritacea, Epilobium angustifolium. Gaultheria shallon. Kindbergia oregana, Mahonia nervosa, and Pteridium aquilinum. Characteristic of young-seral mesothermal forests.
