Got these from my backyard

We pick blackberries in the lanes (basically dirt roads) near our house, and in Glen Canyon or on Mt Davidson. I wouldn't think there would be many here, in one of the densest cities in the USA, but there are plenty. Most people don't seem to want to pick them; they dry out on the vines. Thorns and stains scare people off, maybe. Wimps.

They are a bit tart now... they get sweeter a little later in the summer. They are great in bread pudding, or just syrup them up a bit and serve over ice cream.

Those are some big ones. It's been a nice wet growing season. I wish I had planted grass seed back in April.

I don't know the berries of Virginia even though I spend a lot of time there. Where abouts are you in the state?

We had a house on Blackberry Road but never saw a ripe blackberry. The birds always got them before people could.

We have tons of bushes in the back now. I'd rather not have them at all.

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 17:07:33 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:

Blackberries do not have thorns.

meroUno:

there are both thornless and thorny varieties

technically it is spines, but unless you are a botanist it's thorns

-Lasse

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 20:45:52 -0400, rickman Gave us:

About a stone's throw from Langley.... Great Falls.

Went and saw the B-29 Enola Gay, and the Enterprise Shuttle, and an SR-71A, and an F-35, and an F-4 Phantom, a huge pile of old bi-wing planes and such (even the first), and a full size Redstone missile and a buzz bomb (and a bunch of other early rockets)(and engines) at the museum not too many weeks ago. Even an ION DRIVE engine from like '78. Oh and the Gemini Glenn was in as well (or maybe it was Shepard's). What a tiny tin can.... The space shuttle is HUGE up close. Big payload bay. Quite the contrast.

There were also some very old computer consoles on display and they even have a Concord stuffed in there an a full XM-1 satellite.

One interesting item was a landing gear from an A-380. Just the landing gear... The friggin things are huge. Seeing them lumber in on approach to Dulles gives the appearance that they are standing still in the air.

You're AlwaysWrong.

The local variety (Santa Cruz mountains) has plenty of thorns and are usually protected by nearby poison oak plants. The thorns can produce some nasty cuts and a few infections.

Maybe our birds are wimps too.

Crazy urban greenies here kill blackberries and eucalyptus trees as "invasive species" and some loonies actually plant poison oak, because it's native. Really, San Francisco was grim sand dunes and scrub before people moved here and planted things from all over the world.

I save some of the best blackberries and plant them in vacant lots.

OK, "prickles." They sure feel like thorns.

Blackberries and poison oak are soul mates.

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 22:17:24 -0400, krw Gave us:

No. YOU are wrong, asshole. NONE have 'thorns', SOME have 'prickles', and there are many varieties even that are free of those.

You clueless, alzheimers ridden bastard.

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 20:07:44 -0700, Jeff Liebermann Gave us:

Nope. They are "prickles".

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 20:28:02 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:

Not here.

I have not seen so much convolution of reality as that which California foists upon the world.

From what I have seen, you guys are the Kudzu of mankind.

We just had a boatload of birds that liked unripe fruit. They'd go after our ornamental cherries too, get drunk, and crash into the windows trying to fly through the house.

They are quite invasive, even if they're natural. They're a pain (literally) to get rid of.

Vacant lot? SF? Does not compute.

You probably don't have poison oak. In Louisiana, we has poison ivy.

Here, poison oak and blackberries tend to grow together.

But they do grow together here. Really.

OK, don't buy our integrated circuits or our wine or our almonds.

Do you actually call them "prickles"?

You don't have to demonstrate that you're AlwaysWrong. *Constantly*.

A distinction without a difference, AlwaysWrong.