Brambles - They Are Not Weeds!

weed, n.

1. (a) A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden.
   (b) Rank growth of such plants.
2. Something useless, detrimental, or worthless.

Brambles are always referred to as weeds, as they are prolific over most of England at least, and have rampant growth, spreading out to all corners. This description would hold with parts of the defintion of a weed (growing where it is not wanted, rank growth), and because brambles are covered in thorns, you could add troublesome.

However, I have always thought that the most important part of a definition of a weed, is the "useless, [and] detrimental" parts.

How can a plant that produces the most delicious fruit you can find be 'useless', or 'detrimental' for that matter. They also look lovely at this time of year when they are in fruit. The thorns may be an issue, but if I were a plant that produced such wonderful fruit, I'd protect it too.

My nan has a thicket of brambles in her back garden, and she wants them all removed, as they are weeds. :( I have been trying to show her that they are great, by picking a fair portion of the blackberries from them every week. Then making some puddings from them.

To start off with I've tried making a basic apple & blackberry filling, and using it to make a crumble and a pie.

To make the apple & blackberry filling, I used the following.

8-10 oz blackberries (checked, and washed)
1lb 10oz cooking apples (peeled, then thinly sliced)
4 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp water
3 tsp arrowroot

Just dissolve the sugar in the water in a saucepan, add the apple slices, and cook down for a few minutes, then before the apples are very soft, add the blackberries, mash some of the blackberries down a bit. Then add some arrowroot to thicken, stirring in. Add more sugar if you need it, or more arrowroot if there is too much liquid. (NB. Don't allow the apples to brown much, I put the apples in to the sugar solution as I cut them, this halts the browning a bit. If not, put a tbsp of lemon juice in a bowl and toss the apple in it as you cut.

Then I just put the mixture in to a pie (using basic sweetemed shortcrust pastry) or in to a dish and cover with crumble topping (8oz plain flour, 5oz soft light brown sugar, 2oz butter (or substitute)).

Delicious they were! If I get enough fruit at some point I might make some blackberry jam.

So brambles, they are not weeds, they are a great provider. Nature loves them too, on my nan's patch there were ladybirds, wasps, hoverflies, leaf shieldbugs, spiders, flies, mites, even a frog had come! :)