Dewberry

Information on Dewberry

Common Name: Dewberry
Scientific Name: Rubus caesius
Irish Name: Eithreog
Family Group: Rosaceae
Distribution: View Map (Courtesy of the BSBI)
Flowering Period


Click for list of all flowering by month
Dewberry is not easily confused with other wild plants on this web site.


This is a sprawling, prostrate, plant not unlike Bramble but much less prickly, less upright and with weaker stems and only reaches about 80cm high.  It's a perennial which has biennial stems and which bear very pretty, slightly raggy, white flowers (20-25mm across) with numerous stamens.  They bloom in June and July.  The leaves are trifoliate and toothed.  The blackberry-like fruits have less drupes or individual segments than those of Bramble but each segment is larger than on that plant.  They also have a blue-silver bloom like that on the Sloes of the Blackthorn plant.  This is a plant which grows in dry grassland, hedgerows and in sandy places.  It is a native plant and it belongs to the family Rosaceae

My first recording of this plant is in 1981 close to the shores of Lough Derg, Co Tipperary and I photographed it at Cullenstown, Co Wexford in 2008. 

If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre

There are many forms of Rubus which are extremely difficult to identify and also there are many unnamed microspecies believed to be hybrids between this plant and plants of other subsections of Rubus.  The fruits of this plant are edible.   

Dewberry
Dewberry
Dewberry