With blackberries appearing in ditches and hedgerows across the country in recent weeks, there is a growing consensus that the fruit has appeared earlier than normal.
Welcoming the arrival of the blackberry is biologist Éanna Ní Lamhna, who agrees that they have appeared early this year.
“We normally think of them at the end of August, beginning of September, when we’re going back to school,” she said.
“It’s that time of the year rather than as early as this.”
This is a common understanding of when the blackberry would appear, as those familiar with the Seamus Heaney poem, ‘Blackberry-Picking’, know all too well: “Late August, given heavy rain and sun. For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.”
The weather throughout the months of June and July is the cause of the blackberry appearing in early August, according to Ní Lamhna.
“I think it all had to do with the very, very good weather that we had in June, when the flowers were out,” she said.
“The flowers are lovely pink flowers, and they’re a huge source of pollen and nectar for the bees.
“If the bees visit them, they bring the pollen from one to another and the flowers are pollinated, and the blackberries can form.
“Bees can’t fly in the pouring rain and the wind, so they probably did their business in June.”
The wet weather in July was key to the growth of the blackberry, as the rain allowed the berries to swell and grow.
“I do think all the stars were aligned as far as the blackberries were concerned this year,” Ní Lamhna said.
“The first ones seemed to be all out by the end of July and of course they are the lovely ones to be eaten.”
While eating blackberries may be a popular practice for people walking in fields and on roads, they are also eaten by birds, pine martens, badgers, and foxes.
Ní Lamhna said: “Anything that’s going by eats them, because they’re a lovely source of juice and food.”
The growth of blackberries is mostly left up to the natural dispersal of seeds, and the brambles spreading themselves.
Ní Lamhna said: “If anything eats them and excretes the droppings around, the seeds will germinate from that as well.
“Brambles do very well as any farmer, anybody with a hedge, will tell you.
“When they have half a chance, they will grow everywhere.”
Picking blackberries
Blackberry picking in Ireland is a relatively straightforward task – which is not the case when foraging for some other foods.
“With people going out foraging, there’s always the worry you might miss-identify something,” Ní Lamhna said.
“You wouldn’t be encouraging people to be gathering mushrooms if they weren’t exactly sure what they were doing.
“But with blackberries, there’s no problem. Everybody knows the blackberries. There’s nothing you can mistake it with.”
Blackberry picking is something that can be done with the whole family, according to Ní Lamhna, who added that the fruit picked can be used for making crumbles, jams, or even making blackberry ice cream.
Ní Lamhna warned to avoid picking blackberries along a busy roadside, as she said “the fumes from the road” would cause the blackberries to be covered “with a thing you wouldn’t want to be eating”.
The preferred location to pick blackberries would be, she said, in “the fields away from the road”, where the fruit is “perfectly grand to eat”.