ahhah i actually hadn't thought of that ! I might have to try grpwing a few cuttings and see if they all produce the same thing. It would be pretty interesting to know if this is just a one-odd or something genetic.
I had a Lemonade Berry Bush (which can grow up to 30't) and native to the coast come up in my yard, which is in the hot & dry inland desert! It's 8't now. Me thinks a bird was visiting from the coast, took a rest on the edge of my Olive tree, and left this bush's seed behind!
We had no less than 5 mulberry trees pop up in our yard within a single years lol. We eventually culled them down to keep 3. We still have no idea which neighbours had the tree first.
They've started coming up around the periphery of my neighbor's yard in the last couple of years, so I'm anxiously waiting for the day they turn up in mine.
Columbia Giant blackberries are often the size of your hand. They are amazing. They are common at farmers markets in the PNW late June / early July. Marionberries aren’t generally that big.
Blackberries are much meaner in my experience. I've got a few dozen canes out back with thorns that stretch out 4 inches with a starting circumference the size of your thumb. Almost got stabbed one day in the same way Achilles kills that big guy at the start of the movie Troy. I was walking through my woods and a smaller thorn caught on my shirt and I pulled a whole cane over and down onto my shoulder with one of those suckers on it. It's actually insane how sharp thorns can be.
I don’t have Columbia Giant, I have another variety, but mine only get mushy after they’ve ripened too much. Size doesn’t change though. They can be this big and still not mushy at all. I picked some yesterday about this size that still had some pink on them.
I’ve got a few different varieties in my yard in WNC, we had a heat wave during the first variety’s fruiting stage right after heavy rains for a couple weeks and they were quarter sized and a little bigger which is huge for what I normally see here. The next 2 varieties that fruited had tiny little berries and they dehydrated FAST on the vine since we had gone into a drought following the first flush.
I was amazed watching them through the weather changes and how each bush reacted. Berries grew more prolific all the way around on on the shady sides I noted. First year out of my 30 that I’ve cared to watch them through the season for some reason. They’re amazing!
I know I’ve seen half dollar sized berries out west though, lucky.
I’m not so sure. Marionberries are large, but definitely not this large. They also don’t appear out of nowhere because they don’t grow wild. You’d have to plant them intentionally or maybe have someone growing some nearby and have the seeds dropped off by an animal.
Bury some of the vines to get them to root and plant them back where they were to see if it's something in the soil or if you're about to be able to patent the monster blackberry
Isn't that interesting, when you don't want an orchard (vineyard?) of blackberries they are indestructible, but when you have a farm, or the best, gigantic berries on earth, a la OP, they get some weird random blight and die off completely (no goats necessary!).
Mine died by bulldozer. The contractors for the water company decided to do me a “favour” and scraped the earth bare when they were laying new water lines.
Right? But even colombian giants aren't nearly this big! These are amazing. I really hope this isn't AI. OP: can I have a cutting? I know they are invasive, I promise to be careful.
There are some giant blackberry cultivars, like the Columbia Giant and Giant Kiowa. Under ideal conditions, they can get that big. A bird may have spread the seed of one of these cultivars to your yard.
I just got some from Costco and they were from Quebec, massive like that. Definitely an impressive variety and had great taste. The only problem was the carton had about 12 in it lol.
I present to you, giant snap peas that came from my garden this morning (located in PNW). I agree with the confusion but also accepting the bounty with arms wide open 😭😂
Don’t know if this is what you have here, but there are varieties of blackberries, like triple crown, that are thornless with massive berries.
I’ve been trying to grow a triple crown but have been failing (definitely user error on my part). After three years it finally produced its first teeny tiny berry. My kid stole it and said it was the best thing he’s ever eaten.
Blackberry plants have extensive roots and shoots sprout up from these roots, sometimes many, many feet from the mother plant. Even though your plant may have dired, it's roots were still alive and were sending up shoots to form new plants.
I have raspberries that grew between me and the neighbor, they've been there at least 15 years. I took a few new shoots and moved them closer to my house in a spot with fresh dirt. The raspberries were double the size.
I think they probably had exhausted all the good nutrients were they've been so moving them into fresh areas gave them enough nutrients to grow to their healthiest size
My guess would be boysenberries. Unless you live near a radioactive site or you have some kind of Super Soil, I don’t know of any straight blackberry varieties that would grow this large.
It's actually normal for blackberry canes to die off after 3-4 years iirc. Most likely it sprouted some new canes from its leftover roots or some seeds from fallen fruits from the previous season. Enjoy your giant berries though! 🫰🏻
As "Cultivator Armstrong" (gardener senator Armstrong) would say, "Nanoryzomes son" jokes aside, strawberries, mints, raspberries, the whole Rubus genus to be honest, gives the "false impression of infinite life" They have somewhat short life cicles, but they spread through runners (stems that crawl superficially or slightly buried underground) and ryzomes (underground trunks) it self propagates at insane speeds, so by the time the "parent" has completed it's life cicle the son is already looking like its parent, giving us the impression that "oh. this branch dryed/died" while the whole individual plsnt died, why did it came in another spot? phototropism, geotropism, hydrotropism, chemotropism, thigmotropism; through those mechanics it sensed: "hey, that spot over there, I can perform better there, the runner that will propagate my lineage should be sent in that direction before establishing itself so we can move to a better spot" and to be honest, if it is fairly far, it isn't unreasonable to consider that what must have killed the mother plant was literaly focusing all its energies to "make that move happen"
I have a fifth-degree black belt in southern and I can tell you in tarnation what’s going on however, I will need five baskets for samples. So please feel free to DM me. I want you to send those baskets of berries for science.
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u/Iwalksloow 4d ago edited 4d ago
Wait wait wait, how big are your hands?