Three leaves: Blackberry, blackcurrant and raspberry

While it is sadly not fruit harvesting time yet there are still rich pickings off your fruit bushes and canes and now is the perfect time to pick and dry the leaves of blackberry, blackcurrant and raspberry. This is because they are young and fresh and as they get older they get more bitter...I feel I can relate.

Identification

In case you're not sure what the young plants are like minus their berries I have some photographs which will help me poorly and confusingly illustrate some identifying features of them all.

 Blackberry 

Raspberry

 
So, we have blackberry (stalks and stems covered in jabby hooks which will attach themselves to your skin and never, never let go...perhaps) and  raspberry (woodier upright stem which will not try and shred your hand to pieces). What I am trying to show, quite poorly, is that raspberry leaves are silvery underneath and blackberry leaves are not.

Blackcurrant leaves look completely different...

...and if you rub it gently between your fingers it will smell like, well, blackcurrants. You are unlikely to find blackcurrant bushes while out gallivanting in the hedgerows but you never know your good fortune. Mine grows in my garden and I know its a blackcurrant bush because the label tells me so. Easy!

Uses

Raspberry leaf is probably the best known of all these leaves and the only one commercially available. The others you need to gather yourself but, trust me, it is so worth it and really, while you're at it, you might as well gather and dry the raspberry leaf too. Nothing beats home dried herbs.

So raspberry leaf is used mainly to ease labour pains in childbirth, promote milk flow and ease heavy menstruation but there are some qualities that all of them share.

All of them can  be used internally as a vitamin and mineral rich tonic and an astringent for diarrhoea, sore throats and mouth ulcers. Externally, use them as a strong tea for minor cuts (or simply chew  and spit the mush onto a cut or graze if far from home).

They are all high in tannins, vitamins and minerals...which explains their similar actions. Both blackcurrant and raspberry, if picked when aromatic will give a bit of fruity flavour to your tea.

 Especially blackcurrant...

...blackberry, not so much.

Comments

[Lucy]

gathering today :)

[Stacia Wells]

Thank you for this post--I just wanted you to know that you have solved the mystery of the berries we have all over our little farm--I had long suspected that the "back-berries" from the side yard, the back field and the barnyard were different varieties, based on taste and the fact that the ones in the back field indeed grab me mercilessly--painfully worth it, but they require complete dedication (and long sleeves) going in. Even I, the consummate berry-huntress, find them painful and taxing. Now, from your wonderfully illustrative post, I see that they are blackberries (I had a hunch!), not raspberries, and it is not personal, only their nature:). A comparison of the plants' leaves brought me here--again, thank you. I am deflated to hear blackberry leaf is not as rich an aromatic as is the raspberry, but since I have so much of each, the kids and I will have to experiment!
thank you again--Stacia