Rubus ulmifolius - Zarzamora

Datos de la foto: Camara Kodak DX6490 con Raynox DCR250, Flash Difusor. Campo de Reus (España)

Clasificación científica
Reino: Plantae
División: Magnoliophyta
Clase: Magnoliopsida
Orden: Rosales
Familia: Rosaceae
Subfamilia: Rosoideae
Género: Rubus
Subgénero: Eubatus
Nombre binomial
Rubus ulmifolius

Spanish:
La zarza, zarzamora o mora (Rubus ulmifolius) es un arbusto de aspecto sarmentoso, cuyas ramas, espinosas y de sección pentagonal, pueden crecer hasta 3 metros. Pertenece a la familia de las rosáceas.
Tiene hojas imparipinnadas, compuestas por 3 ó 5 folíolos peciolulados, de forma elíptica ovada u obovada, con borde dentado o aserrado, de color verde oscuro por el haz y blanco-tomentoso por el envés.
Las flores son blancas o rosadas, de 5 pétalos y 5 sépalos. Nacen en racimos, dando lugar a inflorescencias de forma oblonga o piramidal. Los sépalos son grises o tomentoso-blanquecinos. El color de los pétalos varía desde el blanco al rosa, tienen de 10 a 15 milímetros y son de forma ovada.
La fruta, comestible, asemeja una baya carnosa, llamada mora o zarzamora. Sin embargo, no es una baya, sino que está formada por muchas pequeñas drupas arracimadas y unidas entre sí, de color rojo tornándose a negro al madurar.
Es una planta muy invasiva y de crecimiento rápido que también puede multiplicarse vegetativamente generando raíces desde sus ramas. Puede colonizar extensas zonas de bosque, monte bajo, laderas o formar grandes setos en un tiempo relativamente corto.
Es frecuente en setos y ribazos y su distribución original abarca casi toda Europa, el norte de África y el sur de Asia. También ha sido introducida a América y Oceanía.
Su nombre científico deriva del latín "ruber" (rojo), por el color de sus frutos y el epíteto por el parecido de sus folíolos con las hojas del olmo (Ulmus minor).



English:
The blackberry is a widespread and well known shrub; commonly called a bramble in the eastern U.S. and Europe. (Genus Rubus, Family Rosaceae) growing to 3 m (10 ft) and producing a soft-bodied fruit popular for use in desserts, jams, seedless jellies and sometimes wine. Several Rubus species are called blackberry and since the species easily hybridize, there are many cultivars with more than one species in their ancestry.
The blackberry has a scrambling habit of dense arching stems carrying short curved very sharp spines (although many thornless/spineless cultivars have been developed), the branches rooting from the node tip when they reach the ground. It is very pervasive, growing at fast daily rates in woods, scrub, hillsides and hedgerows, colonizing large areas in a relatively short time. It will tolerate poor soil, and is an early coloniser of wasteland and building sites. It has palmate leaves of three to five leaflets with flowers of white or pink appearing from May to August, ripening to a black or dark purple fruit, the "blackberry."
The blackberry is also the fruit of the blackberry plant. In proper botanical language, it is not a berry at all, but instead an aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets.
In the photo at the upper right, the early flowers have formed more drupelets than the later ones. This can be a symptom of exhausted reserves in the plant's roots, marginal pollinator populations, or where a small change in conditions, such as a rainy day or a day too hot for bees to work after early morning, can reduce the number of bee visits/pollen grains delivered to the flower, thus reducing the quality of the fruit. The drupelets only develop around ovules which are fertilized by the male gamete from a pollen grain.
Blackberry blossoms are good nectar producers, and large areas of wild blackberries will yield a medium to dark, fruity honey.
Superstition in the UK holds that blackberries should not be picked after 15th September as the devil has claimed them, having left a mark on the leaves (in the same way a dog might). There is some value behind this legend, as after this date, wetter and cooler weather often allows the fruit to become infected by various molds such as Botrytis, which give the fruit an unpleasant flavor and may be toxic. The blackberry is known to contain polyphenol antioxidants, naturally occurring chemicals that can upregulate certain beneficial metabolic processes in mammals. It is not advisable to use or eat blackberries growing close to busy roads due to the accumulated toxins from the traffic.
The related but smaller European dewberry (R. caesius) can be distinguished by the white, waxy coating on the fruits, which also usually have fewer drupelets.
In some parts of the world, such as in Chile, New Zealand and the Pacific Northwest region of North America, some blackberry species, particularly Rubus armeniacus (syn. R. procerus, 'Himalaya') and Rubus laciniatus ('Evergreen') are naturalized and considered an invasive species and a serious weed.
The blackberry can be reasonably deduced to have been consumed by humans for thousands of years, but there is, in fact, forensic evidence from the find of Iron Age Haraldskær Woman that blackberries were consumed 2500 years ago.

French:
La mûre est le fruit comestible du mûrier, arbre du genre Morus de la famille des Moracées, dont une espèce, Morus alba, le mûrier blanc, fut aussi beaucoup cultivée pour l'élevage du ver à soie qui se nourrit exclusivement de ses feuilles. La mûre est un faux fruit, composée de sorte de baies formées par le périanthe devenu charnu et portant une petite akène qui est le vrai fruit, et accolées les unes aux autres comme les fleurs sur l'épi. Ces fruits sont clairs ou foncés selon les espèces.