Rubus occidentalisL.

black raspberry

WFO wfo-0000983387 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Rubus occidentalis, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. a Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203405669
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by Tom and T Herman
fig. b Tom and T Herman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204690588
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by Bruce Cook
fig. c Bruce Cook, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202249331
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by bgirardot
fig. d bgirardot, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201863444
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by Alina Martin
fig. e Alina Martin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198503916
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by Henry "Nick" Robertson
fig. f Henry "Nick" Robertson, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 197393591
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by john_hall
fig. g john_hall, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196620321
Rubus occidentalis, photographed by Eric Schmidt
fig. h Eric Schmidt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196672385

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 505 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 505 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 14 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Melanobatus michiganus Greene
  • Melanobatus occidentalis (L.) Greene
  • Rubus fruticosus var. tomentosus Fiori
  • Rubus idaeus var. americanus Torr.
  • Rubus occidentalis f. pallidus (L.H.Bailey) Rehder
  • Rubus occidentalis subsp. eu-occidentalis Focke
  • Rubus occidentalis subsp. euoccidentalis Focke
  • Rubus occidentalis var. flavobaccus Blanch.
  • Rubus occidentalis var. grandiflorus Focke
  • Rubus occidentalis var. incisus Schltdl.
  • Rubus occidentalis var. japonicus Miyabe
  • Rubus occidentalis var. occidentalis
  • Rubus occidentalis var. pallidus L.H.Bailey
  • Rubus tomentosus Borkh.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.