Thimbleberry
Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) is an erect deciduous shrub
- Thimbleberry shrubs grow from rhizomes and often grow to form thickets.
- Canes (without thorns) grow up to 1.0 to 2.5 m
- The leaves grow on glandular stalks and are green, hairy, soft, and palm-shaped.
- Large white flowers, each with 5 “wrinkly” petals, form at the ends of stems in small clusters.
- Numerous pale yellowish stamens fill the center of the flowers.
- Large juicy raspberry-like berries form in summer. Some are sweet and some are less-appealing.
- The berries (druplets) surround the core and can be picked in a “thimble-like” shape.
- Berries can be eaten off the shrub or collected for later consumption, but do not keep well.
- Many animals eat thimbleberries and help to spread the seeds in scats.
- Thimbleberries are grown as cultivars for their flowers and leaf colors.
- First Nations people consumed the berries and young shoots.
- Hikers and traditional people have long used thimbleberry leaves for toilet paper, when needed.
- We encounter thimblerry at mid-elevations in cutblocks, along roads, in glades, and on the open banks of creeks, but rarely in open drier low-elevation areas. It is more common in the forests to the east of Kamloops.