Rubus cissburiensis

Rubus cissburiensis is an apomictic microspecies within the Rubus fruticosus aggregate, the European blackberry complex. It forms an arching, biennial-stemmed shrub with first-year primocanes that are angled, ridged and armed with stout, broad-based prickles, and second-year floricanes that bear flowers and fruit before dying back. The palmately compound leaves typically carry three to five ovate to elliptic leaflets, serrate at the margin, dark green and glabrescent above and paler, finely tomentose beneath. Inflorescences are short, leafy panicles bearing pinkish-white five-petalled flowers about 2 to 3 cm across with numerous stamens. The fruit is a globose to ovoid aggregate of glossy black drupelets ripening in late summer. The microspecies is recorded from southern Britain, where it occurs in hedgerows, wood margins and disturbed scrub, and is one of several hundred named microspecies recognised by batologists within the R. fruticosus aggregate.