Description
The dark pink blooms start mid March to greet the hummingbirds to provide much needed nectar. There is some sporadic bloom until into June. Tasty juicy berries are either dark red to golden yellow, sometimes on the same bush. Fruits ripen in sequence to provide a prolonged harvest over the summer months. Multibranched shrubs have sparse short small prickles and makes great thickets along the forest edge and seashore. Shedding cinnamon coloured bark. Takes to severe pruning, but fruit production is on previous year’s wood. Fruits are favored by robins feeding their rapidly growing young. This year there are more fruit than songbird nestlings.
- Seed Count: 30-35
- Collection Date: June 2024
- Hardiness Zone: 3-9
- Height and Width: 2m x 2m
- Germination test type: float
- Family: Rosaceae
How to germinate Rubus spectabilis seed:
Soak seed 24 hours in warm water, mix with a small quantity of coarse or sharp sand and rub between your hands to scarify the hard seed coat for a few minutes. Resoak seed for 24 hours then sow (whether you use flats or baggie sow). Warm stratify at 20-30C for 90 days, then cold stratify at 2-5 degrees C for additional 90 days. Sow evenly (and thinly) onto a humus rich medium. Barely cover with a layer of humus and mist well. give 10-15 C to germinate. Seedlings do best in a shady location in their first year. Do not let the medium dry out for the first year. For best germination sow in the fall outdoors.
