In my opinion, berry season is the best season. Scattered throughout the understory of forests and along field edges various kinds of berries, including blue berries, huckleberries, blackberries and black raspberries, are ripening. Wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius), also called wine raspberries, are another edible berry ripening at this time. Less common and less well known than our native berries, wineberries were introduced from Asia for their ornamental value and with the goal of creating hybrids with red raspberries and blackberries. Wineberries have since escaped cultivation and can now be found growing wild throughout southern Massachusetts, as well as throughout much of the eastern United States, especially in the Appalachian Mountain area. 

Wineberries have aggregate fruits comprised of drupelets, rather than true berries. 

Although we call the fruits berries, botanically they are not true berries at all. Each “berry” is actually an aggregate fruit comprised of numerous drupelets around a central core. The same is true for our other related native species with similar looking fruits. However, although wineberry fruits closely resemble those of other raspberry species, this plant can be easily distinguished from others due to the numerous red glandular hairs present along the stems and the protective calyxes covering the unripened fruit. Wineberry’s compound leaves consist of three serrated, blunt-tipped leaflets, with the two side leaflets substantially smaller than the central one. 

Immature fruits are protected by a calyx covered in glandular red hairs. 

Wineberries have compound 3-part leaves.