“But what about Himalayan Blackberry?”

Making holistic, place-based, process-aware choices

Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), showing new growth, last year’s growth, and thorny cane

When Nikki Hill and I talk to people about our critique of the “invasive plant” narrative, a common response is, “But what about [fill-in-the-blank “invasive plant” they personally love to hate]?”

The misconception seems to be that, since we are arguing against judging plants solely by their place of origin, then we must be advocating for a hands-off approach across the board. Such is the current state of our culture that every single topic must be divided into for vs. against, us vs. them, my team vs. your team. I would not be surprised if the word “nuance” is soon dropped from the dictionary for becoming anachronistic. <sigh>

Nikki and I have both farmed and gardened in many different places, and we know that just about every spot under cultivation has at least one weed species that is especially tenacious. It might be bindweed, or runner grass, or thistle. Or Himalayan Blackberry. We understand the frustration that can arise from trying to extricate something that’s well established or widespread when what you want is carrots.

However, the plants themselves are not preternaturally evil or something. Everything is always context dependent.

As I’ve said before, there are no “bad plants.” There are just particular plants that particular people in particular places at particular times have disliked for particular reasons, and that’s too many particulars to paint an entire species as “bad.” In an agricultural context, mny weeds are edible or medicinal or provide for wildlife. Many were originally crops that have gone out of fashion. Many are natives. (Yes, many are natives; check out my photo essay, “#WeedsArePeopleToo: Springtime reflections on farming & its damages.”)

Some gardeners or farmers consider every single plant that is not their crop to be a weed. Nikki and I both learned over time from experience that not every uninvited guest is competitive; some are neutral and some can be beneficial, but more on that another day.

The point is that any plant must be judged within the context of one’s goal for a space. If the goal is growing plants for food or medicine or crafts, then volunteers who inhibit them are out of place, whether they are native or not. If the goal is to preserve mature tree cover in an urban environment to provide shade or carbon sequestration, then cutting them down just because “they’re not from here” is counterproductive. If the goal is to provide pollen to the increasingly imperiled insect population in zones with heavy human activity, a mix of natives and non makes complete sense, given that such landscapes have been rendered unfit for so many natives, and introduced species can fill in gaps that wouldn’t be otherwise. If the goal is to preserve an undisturbed haven of native flora (an exceedingly rare thing these days), then keeping out non-natives has value (while keeping in mind that native ranges of native plants are themselves in flux due to climate change).

I was thinking about all this because we recently removed some Himalayan Blackberry on a friend’s rural property where we’ve been staying, house-sitting for him while he visited family across the country. There’s patches of Himalayan Blackberry scattered all over the homestead, but we were concerned about removing them in just two spots, each of them around a Fig tree. One of the Fig trees is a big, beautiful creature, and climbing or a ladder will be needed to harvest much of the bounty. The other is smaller, but getting there. Our friend mentioned that most of the fruit on the big one had been inaccessible last summer because of the Blackberries, so we offered to take care of it while he was gone, since this is best done during the tree’s dormant season, before it greens up. Fig leaves are large and likely to be injured when pulling out the vines.

Here’s a “before” picture:

BEFORE: Himalayan Blackberry patch around Fig tree

I’ll admit, I was pretty daunted the first time I took a gander at this project. The patch was dense-looking and there were some long vines climbing up into the tree. But we picked up a couple pairs of gloves from the hardware store, chose a sunny break in the rain, and got to it.

Now, the problem with Himalayan Blackberry in this case is not that it’s introduced. Just that it’s in the way of picking Figs and has thorns. I’m quite grateful that the problem patch wasn’t made up of the native Poison Oak, which can also form dense stands and send vines up trees, and which is much worse to come into contact with. Yeah, Blackberries will give you some scratches no matter how careful you are, but Poison Oak can cause a rash on the skin that last days or weeks and ranges from uncomfortable to agonizing. I’ve somehow never gotten it, but Nikki is particularly susceptible for whatever reason, and breaks out easily. We’ll go on a hike, and she’ll come back with red spots on her skin, but I’ll be untouched. Had it been Poison Oak and not Blackberry, she simply wouldn’t have been able to be involved. And if I had dared, I would have had to either immediately throw all my clothes into the wash with some special soap for removing the oils, or just gotten a cheap outfit at the thrift store and thrown it away afterwards. The oils from the plant absolutely spread from fabric to skin.

So I am personally very thankful that it was the “invasive” (boo, hiss) Himalayan Blackberry and not the native (cue heavenly chorus) Poison Oak that had to go.

Here’s the after picture:

AFTER: Himalayan Blackberry patch around Fig tree

As it turns out, the patch wasn’t as dense as it looked. There were far fewer plants than I feared; they just had lots of long vines. Pro-tip: Don’t just hack down Himalayan Blackberry. Carefully dig up each root ball, pull the plants out of the area whole, and stack them with the roots together on one end. Then you can drag the pile away by picking up the roots together. Because the vines are so thorny, the bundle tends to stay together til you get it to the burn pile or wherever.

The Author, with a Himalayan Blackberry root

Still, digging Blackberries is some real labor, so you don’t want to get into it unless you have to. There’s only so many hours in a day, and the plant can play beneficial roles, so beating it with the “invasive” stick can be a waste of time and resources.

As a lover of disturbed ground — especially when graded by humans for construction, farms or roads — the thorny brambles of Rubus armeniacus provides protective cover. “All right, enough of you and your machines!” they’re telling us. “Stay out of here while Mother Nature reclaims this space!” Many animals, insects and birds shelter in Blackberry patches, and in the marginal spaces of cities, this is especially valuable. The berries provide delicious food for many animals, including humans. C’mon, who doesn’t like fresh Blackberries, especially right off the vine? The soil under the patch is enriched by leaf litter and by animal poop as birds eat the berries and as rabbits, foxes and other mammals make hide-out spots. The roots, spreading wide and delving deep, break up compacted ground. Blackberry makes the spot better than it found it, which is more than can be said of the civilized humans who scraped it in the first place.

Here’s another patch on the same property which is not worth trying to remove:

Himalayan Blackberry patch (steeper incline IRL than it looks like here), with young Alder tree. Note the seep dampening the road here the near the Alder tree. Alders are water-lovers and this is one of the few on the property. Other damp spots, including seasonal and yearlong streams, are dominated by Fir and Oak, thereby excluding Alders, which are not understory trees in this area.

Note that it’s hemmed in by a road on one side and a forest on the other. It’s not going anywhere. On the road side, it will be trimmed back regularly for the passage of vehicles. As for the other side, Himalayan Blackberry is a sun-lover and won’t encroach into the forest, which is predominantly made up of Firs and non-deciduous Oaks, so the shade is year-round. Observe that a few (native) trees are growing up through the patch: Alder, Oak and California Bay. Eventually these will cut off the sun to the area below them. Like all plants, Himalayan Blackberry doesn’t last forever. It has its time that passes, sooner or later.

Sideview of Himalayan Blackberry patch, with Bay and Oak in foreground. Though both shrubby now, these will both eventually become full-grown trees.

Foliage of California Bay tree (Umbellularia californica), growing out of the Himalayan Blackberry patch. The vines in the shot are not Blackberry, but the native Wild Grape (Vitis californica), which often climbs trees.

Non-deciduous Oak (Quercus sp.) in Himalayan Blackberry patch. The vines in the shot are not Blackberry, but the native Wild Grape (Vitis californica), which often climbs trees.

Meanwhile, note also that this patch is on a slope, and it’s doing a great job of preventing erosion, both with its roots and by shielding the ground from pounding rain. This region gets at least sixty inches of winter precipitation, and this year probably topped eighty at this elevation. A bare slope would get eaten away and could eventually undermine the road if kept bare. Something needs to be there, and Himalayan Blackberry got there first. And again, there’s the aforementioned wildlife making use of it, and the humans who live here can eat fresh berries, make jam and vint wine. (Pro tip: Make Blackberry Wine with a Port yeast, and throw in some oak chips during the first stage to lend a barrel essence. Age at least one full year. Yummy!)

But what about every other “But what about?” There is no one answer for every location, no rule to cover every situation. This is (one reason) why the anti-“invasive plant” narrative is so misleading. Perniciously, it claims that all we need to know about a given species is where it’s from, and fuck all to the conditions on the ground or the goals of that space. What’s so callously brushed aside is the ecology of place.

First, we must always remember that every plant is where it is for a reason. Every plant you see fits where it is because of the site’s conditions, conditions which in the daily experiences of most contemporary people in the “developed” nations have been altered — often severely — by industrialized civilization. There is currently a match between the site and the species, whether we believe that species belongs there or not (and I will discuss presence vs. belongingness some other time for sure). In the vast majority of cases, we don’t personally have any idea what was there before the bulldozer, the tractor or the asphalt. What we’re seeing now is Mother Nature working with what’s available, in terms of both conditions and seedbank. There’s nothing wrong with what she does. Some of the plants in these severely disrupted sites are native however that’s defined (and that’s more slippery than a lot of people seem to think, but that’s also a subject for another day) and some are not.

Secondly, the choice to encourage one species or to remove another is, as already stated, entirely contextual. We humans have always preferred some plants over others in a particular place, depending on what we were trying to do there, long before civilization and agriculture and long before the term or concept of nativeness was (ahem) introduced. We will make the best choices only by living in relation with the land again — by relinquishing our Bronze Age ideas of dominion in exchange for ancestral notions of reciprocity. This means demoting the native vs. non-native binary to elevate holistic, place-based, and process-aware perspectives. In short, it means getting real: getting out of our heads and getting our hands back in the soil.