'Ohio Everbearing' black raspberry

When I first heard about the 'Explorer' primocane-fruiting black raspberry, I was convinced it was the first such variety. As it turned out, I was wrong, as numerous such cultivars existed by the turn of the century, although very few ever achieved any importance.

An exception to this, however, is the very first primocane-fruiting black raspberry, 'Ohio Everbearing'. Although not a major commercial success, this variety remains significant as one of the very first cultivated American selections of Rubus, and probably the first named black cap (given the abundance of wild black raspberries, it probably took an unusual trait such as fall-fruiting to warrant a name and cultivation).

'Ohio Everbearing' was discovered in the wild by Nicholas Longworth. Longworth was a self-made millionaire banker from Cincinnati, which in 1804 when he moved there was almost the western frontier. Although his family remained important in local and U.S. politics, and he left an estate worth $10 million when he died in 1863, Longworth's most lasting legacy is as a horticulturist. Often called "The Father of American Viticulture" (a title sometimes applied to his correspondent, John Adlum), Longworth was an avid collector and disseminator of fruit varieties. He championed first the 'Alexander' and then the 'Catawba' grapes and introduced at least one strawberry of his own creation.

Everbearing Black Caps listed in Fred Card's Bush Fruits (1920) American Everbearing Cottier Everbearing [Grigg's] Daily Bearing Earhart Everlasting Every Day Fadely General Negley Hixon's Everbearer Kagy Everbearing King of Cliff's Lum's Autumn Black Raspberry Lum's Yellow Canada Miller's Daily Bearing Munson's Everbearing Mystery Ransom's Everbearing Sweet Home Wonder

Longworth found the original 'Ohio Everbearing' somewhere in central Ohio, where he had retreated in the fall of 1832 to escape cholera outbreaks in Cincinnati. Despite it being September or October, he "found a raspberry in full bearing, a native of our state, the only everbearing raspberry I have ever met with. I introduced it the same winter into my garden, and it is now cultivated by me in preference to all others, and my table is supplied from the beginning of June to frost." Although the variety struggled somewhat on the gravelly soils of his fields, it performed better on clay soils, and Longworth was convinced it might have a future, especially in England. He sent plants there, as did A.J. Downing, though it seems have had little impact there. The legendary Dr. Hogg did note its existence in England as late as 1884, when it was probably gone in the U.S. (Incidentally, in my hypothetical strawberry-themed band, my stage name was going to be "Dr. Hogg").

Longworth was among the foremost horticultural authorities of his day, and an everbearing variety of raspberry would seem to be a major development, so it seems like it should have caught on, but while he and a few others cultivated it commercially, it never seems to have. Black caps, in general, have never attained commercial prominence, perhaps because they were foreign to European tastes, and thus unable to compete with the more familiar red raspberries. Many other everbearers, such as 'Grigg's Daily Bearing', 'Miller's Daily Bearing', and 'Lum's Autumn Black' were selected from its seedlings. (Indeed, I rather suspect most, if not all, of those everbearing black raspberries that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century may claim it as an ancestor. Most of these seem to originate in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, or Illinois, the areas nearest the discovery and commercialization of Longworth's variety).

Primocane-fruiting black raspberries, revisited

I was pleased to find a note in my e-mail this morning from Pete Tallman, developer of the 'Explorer' black raspberry. I mentioned 'Explorer' two years ago (have I really been at this that long?) as an exciting development in a crop in which very little breeding has been done (and, frankly, very little breed success obtained).

Unfortunately, 'Explorer' has not really been a success. I've seen it twice, both times under tunnels: once in Pennsylvania, where it had virtually no fruit and a powdery mildew problem, and another time in upstate New York, where the plants looked healthier but fruit set was still poor, though better. I was rather disappointed, as I'd been pretty excited about the thing.

Tallman's message today explains a big part of the problem: 'Explorer' is not self-fertile. Apparently his field featured things that flowered and provided adequate pollen at the right time, so the problem was never evident under his conditions. This fits with what I saw: the tunnel at Penn State where I saw it had, if I recall, only one other variety in it, while the one in NY, where it had at least some fruit, had several.

While unfortunate, this isn't entirely shocking, as self-incompatibility is fairly common among wild, diploid Rubus, and 'Explorer' is not far removed from the wild source of the primocane-fruiting trait that Tallman discovered. (Not surprisingly, the trait hasn't persisted very long in most commercial types).

Anyway, all is not lost. Tallman has selected another primocane-fruiting black raspberry, dubbed PT-2A4, which does pass the self-compatibility test, and has other desirable traits compared to 'Explorer'. As he describes it:

"Compared to Explorer, the PT-2A4 berries are larger, higher drupelet count, and smaller seeds. PT-2A4 holds my all-time record for a single primocane black raspberry at 3.82 grams. Admittedly, that's a max berry, not an average, but I gotta track something, and average isn't awfuly interesting. Maybe with a little fertilizer this year I could break 4 grams. Unfortuantely, PT-2A4 hasn't captured the reduced thorniness of Explorer, so there remains further breeding down the road to see if I can tie that trait back in again."

He also included a link to his website, which includes a page for PT-2A4.

The Origin of the Tayberry - Joan Morgan's Fruit Forum

Since we're talking about SCRI and Rubus, I figured I'd pass along this link to a story I came across on Fruit Forum about the origins of the Tayberry (essentially an improved Loganberry), written by Derek Jennings, the breeder.

The Origin of the Tayberry (Joan Morgan's Fruit Forum)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Scottish Raspberries in China

Here's a bit of news that kind of surprised me:

Chinese deal is berry good news for Scottish raspberry growers (The Scotsman)

First of all (this isn't the surprising part), let me just say that you don't have to be in the berry business (or the fruit blogging business) very long to get really sick of all the "berry"="very" puns. It's not that clever--give it a rest.

Secondly, note the one small line in here:

"While there is currently no plant royalties legislation relating to raspberries in China, Kerby reckoned a good deal has been struck."

China is basically the world capital of intellectual property theft, has no mechanisms of or, as far as anyone can tell, real interest in, enforcement of patent law. Enforcing plant patent law is tough in the best of cases (note that SCRI seems to be satisfied with 75% success in the Spanish case mentioned in the article, and that is in an EU country with rigorous laws). SCRI has, in my mind, essentially given their raspberry varieties to the Chinese people, and probably to much of the entire world. I have spoken to fruit breeders who have gone to China and seen whole vast fields of what they recongized as their varieties, but were being distributed under other names and claimed as Chinese-developed varieties. They've got a billion and a half people and a gigantic and arcane legal bureaucracy--does any one really think they're going to keep any kind of handle on that? One breeder I know, when asked how to protect one's varieties in China, responded with "By making sure they never, ever enter that country".

I'm not sure the headline even makes sense. Good news for Scottish raspberry growers? How so? Because SCRI is presumably making money on this which will support further breeding for Scotland? I hope it's quite a lot. Otherwise this is just competition for Scottish exports in China, and, probably elsewhere in the world, once these escape the flimsy legal bounds of the deal that's been struck and are being propagated freely.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a cynic.

Update: Just to be clear, this isn't intended as a criticism of the Chinese people or Chinese breeding. There really is not a cultural understanding of the idea of plant patents (hell, we barely have one in the U.S.) and it's not even really illegal (or at least wasn't last I checked a few years back) so it's not like it's a nation of criminals. China does have many fine plant breeding programs and breeders, so I'm not intending to imply that all they do is steal and re-name varieties. But it does happen.

Certified Marionberries

Looks like growers in Oregon have started a certification program to guarantee that what gets labeled 'Marionberry' really is:

Agency to Certify Oregon Marionberries (Seattle Times)

I find this kind of amusing, and not because of the idea of certifying something as a specific cultivar, which I actually like the idea of, though I'm not sure how many people care (I see mislabeled varieties of fruit for sale, the most common I think being Packham's Triumph pears labeled as Bartlett, which I see almost every year. I finally saw them under their own name this year at Nob Hill). No, I find this amusing for two reasons:

1) I find the name Marionberry amusing mostly simply because it remains me of the scandal-plagued ex-mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry. Call me easily entertained, I guess. (Lady Evil Fruit, when I told her about this story, said "So how can the inspectors tell? Do they look for the crack pipe?) (There's also a Marion Berry who is a U.S. Congressman from Arkansas. I found his name amusing, too, but honestly hadn't thought of him since I lived there).

2) The fixation on Marionberries is simply painting growers into a corner. Marionberry is simply a cultivar of blackberries. A very tasty cultivar of blackberries, admittedly. But it's low yielding and kind of a pain to grow, and so to capitalize on the incredible taste, growers have pushed the idea of it as something distinct from blackberries. Which was all well and good, but ongoing breeding work either has or no doubt will (depending on who you ask) produce cultivars with similarly incredible flavor but without many of the downsides. However, people have tied themselves so thoroughly to the Marionberry name, they can't adopt the new varieties without damaging their brand. And now they're setting up a structure that will make it that much harder.

Okay, so I'm not all-knowing.

A few posts ago I mentioned a primocane-fruiting black raspberry, and said that I thought this was the first one out there. Apparently I was wrong, as a search of the Corvallis USDA repository turned up PI 553754 - 'Black Knight'. And that, in turn, was a seedling of something called 'Johnson Everbearing', which from the sounds of it was likely primocane-fruiting too.

The online record says it's from Illinois and was introduced in 1973, apparently by an H. Boll. Beyond that I know nothing of 'Black Knight', and even less about 'Johnson Everbearing', but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else knows anything.

That said, some of my excitement over the 'Explorer' black raspberry was warranted, in the sense that this is almost certainly a new source of the trait (since it was found in wild plants) and may have a different mechanism or inheritance.

'Explorer' primocane fruiting black raspberry!

I could be wrong, but I believe this is the first instance of primocane-fruiting I've heard of in black raspberry.

'Explorer' Black Raspberry

Pete Tallman, by the way, is a private grower/breeder from Colorado. From what I've heard, he's got a very impressive program, and he appears fairly active in NAFEX.

For those of you wondering what primocane fruiting is, and why it's a big deal, here's the basics:

The above-ground portions of brambles (Rubus species) are biennial. Normally, canes grow one year, overwinter, then produce fruit and die. During their first year, they're called "primocanes", during the second, fruiting, year, they are called "floricanes". Primocane-fruiting cultivars, however, deviate from this plan by producing flowers at the tips of their primocanes (portions of the primocanes that flower die and do not flower the next season, so such canes are not flowering twice). This is important for a couple of reasons: a) It removes the requirement to overwinter canes and simplifies care. Because fruit is being borne on first year canes, after the fruit is harvested the plants can be mowed down and allowed to grow back completely each year, and as a result there's less danger of damage from severe cold, because the roots and crowns are less susceptible to damage than the canes. b) It extends the harvest season. Generally, the existing canes from the previous year flower in the spring or early summer, while the primocanes are growing. Once the primocanes have grown, they begin flowering, generally considerably later in the season, sometimes continuing until frost. This can provide new opportunities and markets for growers.

Primocane-fruiting red raspberries have been around for a while, and make up a significant proportion of the industry. For reasons that aren't clear to me, they're frequently called 'fall-fruiting raspberries', yet one never hears 'fall-fruiting' applied to blackberries, despite a similar trait.

Primocane-fruiting blackberries are a relatively new development. The first two cultivars, 'Prime-Jim' and 'Prime-Jan', were released recently by the University of Arkansas, and more are in the pipeline. The trait was introduced from a single source, a wild diploid selection called 'Hilquist', which was weakly primocane-fruiting. The trait is a single recessive gene, but in the tetraploid blackberry breeding program managed to go unnoticed for many years, until it was developed by Dr. Jim Moore and his graduate student (now Dr.) Jose Lopez-Medina, and later Dr. John Clark. Researchers in Europe have also been working on transferring the raspberry primocane-fruiting trait into blackberries, but to my knowledge no cultivars have resulted from this effort.

So far as I can remember, however, I hadn't heard anything about primocane-fruiting black raspberries. Although theoretically crossable with red raspberries and blackberries, this is frequently too difficult to be practical (purple raspberries, as you might have suspected, are hybrids of red and black raspberries). On top of this, the native germplasm base has been shown to be surprisingly uniform at the genetic level, limiting the breeding potential. So the discovery of a new trait in black raspberry is rather exciting in general.

New Black Raspberry Virus Discovered

Robert Martin, a USDA pathologist in Oregon, has described a new virus believed responsible for the growing scourge of "black raspberry decline". The disease has serious repercussions, markedly shortening the lifespan of plantings and reducing yields. Decline diseases are frequently the result of mixed infections of many viruses, making it difficult to pin down the effects of any one of them or precisely define symptoms. This new bug, however, is sufficient to cause disease all by its lonesome, and it appears readily transmitted by aphids. It's been given the catchy name "Black Raspberry Decline Associated Virus" (just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?), or "BRDaV".

One thing that became disturbingly clear when I was working with brambles (in my case blackberries), is that practically all of them are all but dripping with viruses. Pretty much every plant you look in. Frequently you can't see anything resembling symptoms, but they're there, lowering vigor, reducing yield, making the plants that much more susceptible to stress. And, if you're a nursery owner, just waiting to stand in the way of you shipping your plants out of state. The usual solution is to use meristem culture (the meristem region, where plants do their active growth, is comprised of cells with few or no virus particles, so plants grown from this small patch of cells will be clean). The problem is, of course, in a world chock-full of Rubus viruses, how long do they really stay clean? And do we really want to know?

Fruit Genetics Friday #2: Polyploid Inheritance

Last time on Fruit Genetics Friday, I discussed the basics of polyploidy. Polyploidy has lots of implications for fruit breeding, and some of the most profound are in terms of inheritance.

Inheritance in polyploids is different than in diploids, though the fundamental pricinpals remain the same. I'm going to assume once again that you've all got the dominant vs. recessive bit pretty much down. I'll use thornlessness in tetraploid blackberries as an example, since I've worked with it a bit. There are a couple of types of thornlessness in blackberries, but the most common is a recessive gene derived from Rubus ulmifolius var. inermis and passed on via 'Merton Thornless', s. In a diploid, you might have SS (thorny), Ss, and ss (thornless). In the tetraploid you get a few more genotypes:

SSSS (Thorny)
SSSs (Thorny)
SSss (Thorny)
Ssss (Thorny)
ssss (Thornless)

One thing you may notice is that it's a lot harder to see the recessive trait expressed. This can be a problem if you're breeding for a trait which is recessively inherited. The more slots to be filled, the more likely one of them is going to come up with the dominant and mask your desired trait.

Just how these four get passed on depends on what type of polyploid you're dealing with. If our tetraploid is an autoploid, we basically wind up doing the scaled version of the old familiar diploid inheritance. Instead of choosing 1 of 2 alleles from each parent, we just choose 2 of 4 instead. So if we are selfing a cultivar which is SSss, we get:

Gametes produced (frequency):
SS (1/6)
Ss (4/6)
ss (1/6)


To the following offspring (frequency):

SSSS = SS & SS (1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36) (Thorny)

SSSs = SS & Ss or Ss & SS (1/6 x 4/6 + 4/6 x 1/6 = 8/36) (Thorny)

SSss = SS & ss or ss & SS or Ss & Ss
(1/6 x 1/6 + 1/6 x 1/6 + 4/6 x 4/6 = 18/36) (Thorny)

Ssss = SS & Ss or Ss & SS (1/6 x 4/6 + 4/6 x 1/6 = 8/36) (Thorny)

ssss = ss & ss (1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36) (Thornless)

So, as I noted before, even if your parents have half their alleles the recessive, only 1 in 36 of the offspring will show the trait (compare this to 1 in 4 for a comparable situation in a diploid). These ratios also assume random chromosome assortment. Random chromosome assortment is considered a given in diploids, and more or less most of the time it is in autoploids, as well, but one consequence of having multiple possible partners for each chromosome is that sometimes the fact that they can form configurations other than simple pairs leads to complications, particularly something called random chromatid assortment. I won't go into the details here because it's a mess, but suffice it to say, weird things happen, including getting progeny with genotypes impossible under normal assumptions (such as SSSs x SSSs yielding some offspring with ssss, for example).

The situation is different with an alloploid. If you recall, alloploids have distinct sets of chromosomes from differing origins (in this case we'll call them A and B). These sets are going to pair with each other, so you get regular pairing like in a diploid, effectively giving you the equivalent of two genes with two copies each, rather than four copies of a single gene. In some ways this simplifies things, but it also adds a few twists. For example, not all SSss individuals will pass on the trait the same way, because it matters which genomes the alleles are in. If both genomes have one copy of either allele (we'll express it [Ss][Ss], with the first pair of brackets the A genome, the second the B), then we see something like this:

Gametes produced (frequency):
SS [S][S] (1/4)
Ss [S][s] (1/4)
sS [s][S] (1/4)
ss [s][s] (1/4)

You might have noticed that it'd be much easier to find a ssss seedling in this case, 1 in 16. However, another SSss individual may have its genes configured differently. If both copies of the recessive are in one genome and both copies of the dominant in the other ([SS][ss], we see something more like this:

Gametes produced (frequency):
Ss [S][s] (all)

See what's happening? The A genome is [SS], so it can only contribute an S to a gamete. The B genome is [ss], so it can only contribute an s. Thus all gametes will be the same, and in fact, all selfings will result in the same genotype, in this case SSss ([SS][ss]), the same as the parent. So it would be impossible to find any thornless plants at all, no matter how many seedlings you grew out from the selfing.

To add yet another wrinkle to this, in higher order polyploids, you can have segmental alloploids, where portions of the genome behave like autoploids within an alloploid. So one could have a hexaploid [SSss][Ss], for example, in which the A genome exhibits inheritance like an autotetraploid, and the B genome behaves like a diploid. Crazy stuff.

The big lesson here is, of course, polyploids are darn complex (which is why the inheritance of many important traits, even in well-studied polyploid species, is still unknown except in vague terms). In fact, they are complex enough that I'm thinking this probably wasn't a wise topic to tackle, particularly early in this series, but I promised it, so there it is. Enterntained me to write it, anyway. Feel free to ask questions, and I'll do what I can to explain.

"Next Week" on Fruit Genetics Friday: Self-Incompatibility. Why do some fruit crops require a second variety to pollinate, and why do some pollen source work better than others?

I'm willing to entertain requests, too, by the way...I don't have any kind of master plan for this series, besides a vague hope to make it quasi-regular in its timing, and I've always gotten great article suggestions from my readers in the past (some of which I've followed through on, and some of which have fallen through the cracks.)

Aunt Rosie's Old Fashioned Rubus x loganobaccus

A recent discussion regarding fruit drinks revealed two facts to me:

A.) Aunt Rosie's Loganberry drink is a regional thing. Apparently it's available only in western New York, where I grew up. It joins things like Genesee beer on the list of things I assumed everyone had heard of that earn me weird looks now that I live a thousand miles a way.

B.) Nobody has a clue what a loganberry is. Well, people have a clue, in that a couple people suggested it was "like a raspberry". Considering there is some one in my lab who didn't know pickles were made from cucumbers, that's actually really pretty darn close.

It's not really that big a surprise that most people here haven't seen them...they aren't widely grown in the east, though most people have heard of them. Even where they are grown, they aren't especially well liked by many producers, as the fruit doesn't harvest very cleanly (more on this later), is frequently obscured by leaves, and ripens unevenly. Productivity is not especially high. Still, there's a market for them, and fair numbers (mostly produced in the Pacific Northwest, like all brambles in this country) are produced, mostly for drinks and jam. The plant is vigorous, sprawling, and thorny (though there are thornless forms).

The origins of the 'Loganberry' are still shrouded in mystery, and every time I think I've heard the last word on it I see something new suggesting something different. But here are the facts as they are known (to me, at any rate):

In 1881, near Santa Cruz, California, Judge James Harvey Logan decided to take a stab at blackberry breeding. In his garden grew a California dewberry, Rubus ursinus, called 'Aughinbaugh'. Dewberries require pollination from an outside source, and Logan assumed that source would be the 'Texas Early' blackberry he had growing nearby. He collected seeds and grew out about a hundred seedlings.

Two of these seedlings attracted his attention. One was a truly enormous beast of a plant, with a berries two and half inches long (Logan reported that this original plant produced 149 feet of fruiting canes, and covered a wall 40 feet long and 6 feet high with foliage). It was clearly a blackberry, presumably a hybrid of Rubus ursinus x 'Texas Early', and he named it 'Mammoth'. (A photo of 'Mammoth', from E.J. Wickson's California Fruits appeared as the Image of the Day a while back...see it in the archives here.)

The other was an even more unusual plant. Although the plant was similar to the wild blackberry, the fruit were strikingly different. They started a bright red, darkening to a dull purple when ripe, and had surfaces more like raspberries than blackberries, but the torus (the central core of the fruit) was more tightly attached to the fruit, though not so much as the blackberry. (The rule of thumb in determining whether a bramble is a blackberry or raspberry is the type of fruit detachment: raspberries leave the torus attached to the plant, leaving hollow fruit, while blackberries retain the core. Hybrids between the two frequently split the difference, which doesn't work especially well.) It was self-fertile, disease and insect resistant, and, by the standards of the day, quite productive.

Logan concluded that a little pollen from a third plant had snuck in, probably the raspberry he had growing on the other side of the dewberry. Although I've generally heard this referred to as 'Red Antwerp', an old cultivar, possibly of English origin, Logan himself explicitly states in his Memoirs: "The raspberry referred to has been growing in this place for the last forty years, and; I am unable to ascertain what variety it is, although it is of a type similar to the Red Antwerp. It is not, however, the Red Antwerp as we have been growing it here." So who knows for sure what it actually was. Fuller's Small Fruit Culturist, a contemporary reference book, lists an 'Antwerp Red' (aka True Red Antwerp, Old Red Antwerp, Knevett's Antwerp, Howland's Antwerp, Burley's Antwerp, and English Antwerp), an 'Antwerp' (aka Hudson River Antwerp or New Red Antwerp), and an 'Allen's Antwerp', 'Barnet's Antwerp' and several others described as "very similar to the Antwerp", so it's hard to say just what had made it's way across the continent labeled 'Red Antwerp'.

Regardless, the 'Loganberry' caught on, making its way to Europe by 1897 and displacing most other blackberries in southern California. Still, debate raged about just where the 'Loganberry' came from. It had surprisingly regular reproductive behavior for a wide interspecific hybrid: it was fully fertile and bore progeny very similar to itself. without segregation for blackberry and raspberry characters. Cytogenetic work indicates regular chromosome pair behavior, consistent with a true species, rather than a hybrid. These led many botanists (including some current ones) to consider it a red fruited subspecies of Rubus ursinus, most prominently George Darrow, though he eventually reversed his judgement decades later. Subsequent experiments have borne this out in my opinion, though there are diehards who still support the blackberry hypothesis.

In 1933, a thornless mutation of 'Loganberry' was found, making it one of the earlier thornless cultivars available. While this was a notable improvement, it had one major fault, in that it did not come true from root cuttings or suckers, nor was the thornless trait transmitted to its offspring. The mutation in 'Thornless Loganberry' turns out to be present only in the outer layer of cells, and when tissue originated from other layers (such as the roots or reproductive tissues) it lacked the mutant gene. In 1986, however, this problem was solved when researchers managed to generate a pure thornless loganberry they called 'Lincoln Loganberry', by using tissue culture. (The same folks also solved a similar problem with the blackberry 'Thornless Evergreen'.) Another lab in Italy also produced similar thornless loganberries. The thornlessness gene seems to be dominant, which may prove useful now that it can be sued for breeding (the most common source of thornlessness in blackberries is a recessive trait).

Logan's successes with the 'Loganberry' and 'Mammoth' blackberry helped touch off a nationwide interest in hybridization, particularly among the small fruits. Its introduction was followed by a number of California hybrid berries: 'Boysenberry' (a cross of Loganberry by a wild dewberry), 'Phenomenal' (another blackberry/raspberry hybrid, introduced by Luther Burbank), 'Youngberry' ('Phenomenal' x 'Austin Mayes'), and 'Olallieberry' ('Loganberry' x 'Youngberry'). Many of these have now replaced the 'Loganberry', but it remains the best known of the hybrid brambles. So while the 'Loganberry' itself has become something of a rarity, its progeny remain with us.

Now if I could just find some Aunt Rosie's.

(Not that it's particularly incredible, but thinking about it has left me with a powerful nostalgic longing for it.)