RASPBERRY, known botanically as Rubus Idaeus (family Rosaceae, q.v.), a fruit-bush found wild in Great Britain and in woods throughout Europe, North Africa and in north and west Asia. The raspberry was known to classic writers, and is men tioned by Pliny as one of the wild brambles known to the Greeks as Idea, from Mt. Ida in Asia Minor on which it grew. Parkinson (Paradisus, 1629) speaks of red. white and thornless varieties as suitable for the English climate, and Gerarde (Herbal, 1597) figures and describes the Raspis or Framboise bush as one of the four kinds of bramble. It is propagated from suckers. which may be taken off the parent stools in October. and planted in rows 5 or 6 ft. apart, and at 3 ft. asunder in the rows. It is the habit of the plant to throw up from the root every year a number of shoots or canes. which bear fruit in the subsequent year. and then decay. In dressing the plants. which is done immediately after the crop is gathered. all these exhausted stems are cut away, and of the young canes only three or four of the strongest are left. which are shortened about a third. The ground between the rows should never be disturbed by deep digging; but an abundant supply of good manure should be given annually in autumn as a dressing. which should be forked in regularly to a depth of 4 or 5 inches. All surplus suckers should be cut away early in the summer—five or six, to be reduced to the four best, being to each root.
Fresh plantations of raspberries should be made every six or seven years. The double-bearing varieties. which continue to fruit
during autumn, require light soils and warm situations. These should be cut close down in February. as it is the strong young shoots of the current year which bear the late autumnal crops. The other varieties may be made to bear in autumn by cutting the stems half-way down at an early period in spring; but, as with all other fruits. the flavour of the raspberry is best when it is allowed to ripen at its natural season.
The European raspberry has been largely displaced in the United States by a closely allied native species. R. strigosus. the numerous varieties of which are hardier than the varieties of the European species and ripen their crop much more rapidly. The stems are more slender and flexible than in R. 1th:tens. usually brown or reddish-brown in colour and beset with stiff s.traight prickles. The most important raspberry of cultivation in North America is R. occidentalis. the black raspberry or thimbleberry, which is at once distinguished by its firm black. rarely yellow. fruit. The purple-cane raspberry. R. neglectus. with fruit varying in colour from dull purple to dark red or sometimes yellowish, is perhaps a hybrid between R. strigosus and R. occidentalis.
For a detailed account of the American species of Rubus, see F. W. Card. Bush-fruits (1898). See also L. H. Bailey, Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1914-27); and W. P. Hedrick, Small Fruits of New York (1925).