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I've just picked, and eaten, a ripe bramble.

Incidentally: spikey thorny bushes are called brambles. The fruits that grow on them are called brambles, also known as blackberries.

Or so I think. One of our sysadmins at work insists that only the bushes are called brambles - to the extent of being adamant that bramble jelly is made from the leaves and the shoot-tips. He's clearly insane.

However. How common is it to call the fruits brambles ? Would you do it ?

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From:

venta.livejournal.com

I've just looked at a couple of on-line dictionaries too, and it seems you and

floralaetifica are right according to them.

I've honestly never heard anyone call a raspberry cane a bramble before now.

From:

wimble.livejournal.com

1. A rough prickly shrub; spec. the blackberry-bush (Rubus fruticosus).

So glad that doesn't clear anything up ;-)

From:

onebyone.livejournal.com

It's worth pointing out that the OED (or any dictionary) is a bad place to look for specialist terminology.

In particular, it doesn't do very well in cases like this might be, where a term is used frequently for a single species or small group of species, and less frequently for a wider class. For instance, compare a dictionary with a bird-watching guide.

From:

venta.livejournal.com

I also wasn't querying what the word meant (well, it turns out I was, as I didn't realise you could use "bramble" for raspberry canes and loganberry hatstands as well).

I accept that all these definitions are valid, I just wanted to know how commonly people used them.

wimble, could the OED start including usage stats, please ?