Flexuose bramble

Rubus flexuosus is a microspecies of bramble belonging to the Rubus fruticosus aggregate in the family Rosaceae, recorded among the European brambles. It is a scrambling perennial shrub forming arching, prickly biennial canes that bend and root at their tips to create dense thickets. Its leaves are palmately compound, typically with three to five toothed leaflets that are green on the upper surface and paler, sometimes felted, beneath. The white to pale pink, five-petalled flowers appear in branched clusters during summer and are followed by aggregate fruits composed of numerous small drupelets that ripen from green and red to glossy black. As an apomictic agamospecies it reproduces largely without sexual fertilisation, perpetuating a stable, narrowly distributed form. It is found in hedgerows, woodland margins, scrub, and disturbed ground across temperate Europe.