Looking for berries

[rocco1504]

Hi Rocco and other thread users,
Had a feeling I might be useful on the forum tonight hence me flying
By

Good-ish news first I have both the veitchberry and maybe the kings acre berry and shouldn’t be a problem propagating them for you ,

I say maybe on the kings acre without muddying the water to much I have found over the years there seems to be different strains of the same berry ( loganberry ) people think maybe 2, thorny and thornless but there are many strains!!!! ,

The kings acre I have occasionally suffers winter killing ( this is mentioned as one of its problems in some books ( as well
As 100s of Varieties of soft fruit I collect old fruit books that have the information of the old varieties) it says it ripens early July but I
Find a bit later July, I have seen pictures with thick canes the one I had has thinner canes than
What I’ve seen but you do have to be careful google searches do not always show correct Berry to photo shown and neither do some books!!!
If I can find a way to post pics I’ll put up some info

A lot of the older berries do have some issues which have stopped companies selling them which is a shame, but when we’re over 100yrs old sure we,ll have some issues too
Stew

Hi Stew


Firstly, my apologies that it's taken a while to reply, Life and all that.

And secondly, What can I say, I feel like Christmas has come early, thank you so much, those information pages were extremely helpful, and I've saved them for later use; I'd be very interested to know which books those pages were from ?.

Also, I would be very much like to take you up on your offer of perhaps propagating those berry plants for me, as, like you said the Kings Acre appears very hard to find, I was contemplating asking Wisley if I might be able to get some plant matter from them, but I don't really hold out much hope of a positive reply.

Excuse my lack of knowledge, but when you say the Kings Acre "suffers winter killing" is there any particular reason for this or is it just cold wet weather that does it ?, and is there remedy to this ?.

I would imagine as a collector of "Berry Plants" I would think you suffer similar difficulties to those that I did when I had a very large collection of Aconitum some 25 years ago, being that when you find a particular species, is actually being certain that it is what it Is, the amount of times I came across plants being sold as something rare, only to find out that it was actually something fairly ordinary; In the end I only collected new plants from dedicated plant hunters which threw up some incredible species that hadn't ever been seen outside Asia, but I would imagine specialist soft fruit/ Berry nurseries are a bit thin on the ground.

As you say, it is a shame that some of the older varieties don't get a look in commercially as some of the older plants I would imagine are very special, and also if they're not being sold or whatever chances are we'll lose them.

Anyway, I'm blabbing way too much, but I would like to say again, thank you so much for the info, and I would be very interested in getting those plants from you, as long as it's not too much trouble and you really don't mind doing it ?

Lastly, thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply, it's very much appreciated.

[swaine]

A few of the many books I use

[swaine]

Few more books

[swaine]

Few more books

[swaine]

Hi Rocco , here’s a few of the books I use, the info on the kings acre berry came from the ingredients book, fruit cultivation for the amateur and growing fruit, a couple of the others may have brief mentions

No problem at all propagating them for you , I’ve only been asked twice before in about 20 years about the kings acre so nice to see people still thinking about it , out of all the berries the king acre seems to be the most varying in description ,
It’s a true blackberry , it’s a hybrid , it’s from the uk, it originated in USA
Thick canes, thin canes , big berries, small berries,

I’ve had winter kill with a few rubus on a certain site quite heavy soil
but found when moved they didn’t suffer this didn’t kill plants outright just the seasons growth to the ground

Mislabelled soft fruit unintentionally I’d like to think is still quite a big problem , I think I’ve had to at least replace 25% of my collection over the years after being supplied wrongly labled plants ,

If you need anything else don’t hesitate to ask ,
Stew

[veggiechicken]

Swaine, I only have one of your books - the Flowerdew one. However, you prompted me to look for one of mine - "Beeton's Dictionary of Everyday gardening" which has recommendations for different types of fruits.
There's a pdf of the book at https://archive.org/details/beetonsdictionar00beetrich and its searchable (I think)

[swaine]

Excellent veggie chicken I’ll
Look for that one I have a beetons which is a real good read

[swaine]

Some more on the kingsacre

[swaine]

Some more kingsacre

[rocco1504]

Some more kingsacre

Hi Swaine

Again, what can I say, the book information is really helpful, I'll have to see if I can track some of them down for future use.


It's amazing though that a plant that is/was quite popular at some point is so difficult to find, as I say, it was last listed in 2012 and if I hadn't asked here, I wouldn't have known where to start, so I have to say again, I'm really happy.

Going back to the books for a moment, I remember when I really started collecting My Aconitum collection, I decided that I really wanted to know as much as I could and to make sure that the plants I was getting were what I was after, and I went one day to the Lindley Library in London, and managed to come away with probably a small book's worth of copied information, so much so that I even had a couple of friends with specialist nurseries after me, so they could check their wild collected species against some of the info I had, I would think that somewhere like the Lindley would have a wealth of historic info on soft fruit species; I feel a day out coming on.

It's funny you saying about winter kill knocking back "just the seasons growth to the ground", this very long hot spell has done something similar to a Japanese Wineberry I have, it's killed this years fruiting section of the plant but left next years new growth quite happily growing away, very strange.

Mislabelled plants really is a bind though, like you, I don't think people do it intentionally, I think perhaps people just get given/ buy a plant and are told "It's this" and then go on either giving or selling it as that wrong description, I think the problem lies in the fact that a lot of nurseries, plant outlets aren't very interested in the parentage of a plant, rather getting it into a pot, and making their profit from it, it's only when you start to find specialist, perhaps single genus or Plant Hunter nurseries that you get into dealing with people who are like minded and who will more than likely let you have what you are looking for or something equally desirable; I love going to plant hunting nurseries, you just never know what gems you will find.

I took a couple of pictures of my "Sunberry" the other day, I call it a Sunberry, as that what I was given it as, but it may well be something else, when I can, I'll post it on here and you can verify it for me, if you would.

As regards "If you need anything else don’t hesitate to ask", I think for the moment you have done more than I could have reasonably expected, and I'm extremely grateful and I will contact you Via PM, to talk more about your kind offer, if that's OK.

Many Thanks again Stew

Kind Regards Paul