Rubus ursinus

California blackberry

Family: Rosaceae · Type: shrub · Native

California blackberry is a native shrub found in California's Central Coast and Coastal Foothills Ranges in open, disturbed areas at elevations below 1,500 meters. Flowering from March to July, this plant produces delicate white flowers 6 to 8 millimeters long with white petals. Growing with flexible stems 2 to 10 millimeters in diameter that can root at their tips, it spreads in prostrate to decumbent form with numerous weak, slender straight bristles. Its leaves typically have 3 to 5 leaflets with terminal leaflets that are triangular-ovate, irregularly coarse-toothed, and sparsely covered in gray hair on the underside. The fruit develops as a distinctive blackberry, turning deep black when mature.

Habitat: Common. Open, disturbed areas

Bloom period: Mar-Jul

Elevation: < 1500 m

Bioregions: CA-FP

California counties: Humboldt, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside, Santa Clara, San Bernardino, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Fresno, Placer, Orange, San Diego, Sonoma, Kern, San Luis Obispo, Butte, Monterey, Merced, Yuba, Tulare, Marin, Del Norte, San Francisco, Mendocino, Alameda, Siskiyou, Sutter, Colusa, El Dorado, Mariposa, Shasta, Solano, Tuolumne, Amador, Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Plumas, San Benito, Trinity, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Yolo, Glenn, Sierra, Nevada, Calaveras, Stanislaus

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.