Railway bramble

Rubus elegantispinosus, the railway bramble, is a vigorous scrambling shrub of the rose family belonging to the European blackberry (Rubus fruticosus aggregate) complex. It produces long, arching, biennial canes (primocanes and floricanes) armed with stout, often slender and elegant prickles, as the epithet suggests. The leaves are palmately compound, usually with three to five toothed leaflets that are green above and paler, sometimes hairy, beneath. The flowers are borne in branched clusters and have five white to pale pink petals surrounding numerous stamens. The fruit is an aggregate of black, juicy drupelets, the familiar blackberry. It is a cultivated-origin microspecies that has become naturalised in Europe, spreading along railway embankments, hedgerows, scrub, woodland margins, and waste ground, where bramble thickets form dense, self-layering stands.