That was early!

[venta]

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 ?

Comments

[kneeshooter]

I call the fruits berries, and the spikey bushes brambles.

Does that make me common or not?!

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Northern Freak ;-)

My vast horde of bramble collection doesn't have ripe fruit yet but it is heading there quite rapidly.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

The fruits are clearly not brambles! Only the bushes are brambles. I believe bramble jelly is so called because it is made of more than one type of bramble fruit (eg blackberries, loganberries, raspberries etc).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Rubbish!

Raspberries grown on raspberry canes, not bramble bushes...

Well, they do in my world.

[chrisvenus]

Never called the fruit brambles in my life. being intrigued I went to www.dict.org (no access to OED unfortunately) and the definition said "Any plant of the genus Rubus, including the raspberry and blackberry." so that implies that you're totally wrong (in that brambles aren't just blackberries). Of course that might not be a great definition so I'll wait for a decent OED one before going on. It does kind of agree with what I thought though that brambles are just spiky git plants. )

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd normally call them blackberries, but I wouldn't think you were odd* for calling them brambles. I wouln't eat any bramble jelly that your coworker made...

*Cue obvious comments

[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.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Fool! The raspberry bramble bushes grown over a support of canes!

[venta.livejournal.com]

That too.
But the actual plants are called as canes, as well.

Look! (http://www.which.net/gardeningwhich/advice/raspberrycane.html)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Strange. But it's a fair cop.

And the genus Rubus...

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Isn't small....

http://nbn.nhm.ac.uk/nhm/bin/nbntaxa.dll/taxon_details?taxon_key=NBNSYS0000165416

[shermarama]

I'd sometimes call the fruit you find on wild bramble bushes that are commonly called blackberries brambles, but, I've probably picked that up as a back-formation from making bramble jelly using blackberries. And not the leaves and shoots...

Wild raspberries as opposed to cultivated varieties do look more like common brambles, long straggly stems with small thorns. The tendency to form neat canes has been bred in, I think.

Well...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Brambles is the plants you find growing on roadsides and in woodlands, and the fruit thereof. Though I hear some people call them 'blackberries'.

Raspberries, as everyone knows, grow on canes and attract tinks and gadgees from a long way away to come and pick them for a pittance.

I lived in the Tay Valley, I know these things.

Well, according to us...

[wimble.livejournal.com]

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

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

Re: Well...

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Did you pick loads of tayberries then?

I used to work on a fruit farm. For 6 summers.

Re: Well...

[nevecat.livejournal.com]

There are also several varieties of wild brambly thing, IIRC. Some of distinctly more spiky and some have fruit with far fewer 'globules'.

I do seem to remember that some of them are non-edible, but that could have just been that my parents used to take me blackberry-picking in places where there was deadly nightshade mixed in or something *shrugs vaguely*

Mind you, the plants were clearly mutated back at home - for example 6'+ tall nettles that could (and frequently did) sting through multiple layers of rubber gloves, gardening gloves/leather mittens. And then proceed to hurt for about a week (no, that isn't childhood exaggeration, my mother still dons protective clothing to try and get rid of them and still gets horribly stung)...

Re: Well, according to us...

[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.

Re: Well, according to us...

[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 ?

Re: Well, according to us...

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

See my link later which is from a project which matches common terms with latin names.

My 2cp

[edling.livejournal.com]

Well if you ask me, calling everything a bramble is just one of those strange northern things...
My classification (which I think broadly agrees with everyone else, in bits, maybe) is that 'bramble' is a sort of superclass, consisting of all the various hedge dwelling plant life with big spiky bits on. Any berries are named according to the specific type of bush they came from eg: Blackberries. I've never heard of the fruit being called 'brambles' before.
According to this though, jam made from > 1 type of fruit should be Brambleberry Jam, so summat's off-kilter somewhere though.
Additionally, I've not really seen 'bramble' used as a singular noun before, only in the plural (some brambles), or as a pronoun (a bramble bush).
Before anyone asks: Yes i did have to look up a large chunk of the English language to explain that, and I've probably still got it wrong...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I call the plants brambles and the fruits blackberries, but if you said "bramble jelly" I'd know you meant some stuff like blackberry jam.

[(Anonymous)]

Put it down to being a Northerner, petal (and there's another NORTHERN use of a word. Anyone up here (north of the Tees and maybe north of the Trent)would know exactly what you meant. Fruit of said roadside/cultivated prickly strands which grab the picker by the skin/gloves/clothing.
Bramble, as in "bramble bush" is an adjective, not a pronoun.
Spelunca

[edling.livejournal.com]

(Hasty check). Oh yeah, it is an adjective, isn't it- back to the bottom of the class for me...

Re: Well, according to us...

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Hatstands? You're just making it up now.

Re: Well, according to us...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Nah... just trust me :) I was right about the canes, wasn't I ?