Dwarf raspberry

Rubus pubescens, the dwarf red raspberry or dewberry, is a low, herbaceous perennial of the Rosaceae growing as a creeping carpet on the floor of moist coniferous and mixed-wood forests, swamp margins, alder thickets and stream banks across the boreal and northern temperate zones of North America from Alaska east to Newfoundland and south to Oregon, Colorado, the Great Lakes region and West Virginia. Unlike most woody Rubus relatives, its trailing horizontal stems are slender, herbaceous, finely hairy and bear only weak, soft prickles or are nearly unarmed; short, upright leafy shoots arise to a height of 10-30 cm. The compound leaves are trifoliolate, the central leaflet diamond-shaped and largest, with sharply double-toothed margins. White, five-petalled flowers about 1-1.5 cm across appear singly or in small clusters in late spring, and the fruit is a small, shiny, deep red aggregate of relatively few large drupelets that, unlike a true raspberry, does not separate cleanly from the receptacle and has a delicate, sweet-tart flavour. The species reproduces vigorously by stoloniferous runners that root at the nodes.