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Rubus nessensis Hall

Account Summary

Native, apparently very rare, but probably under-recorded.

July 1946; MCM & D; Lough-a-Hache, near Mount Darby.

All three existing records of this suberect bramble date from 1946-53 and were determined by Dr Watson from specimens collected by Meikle and his co-workers. No recent records have been made due to a lack of local Irish expertise in this critical plant group. The remaining site details of the other two stations are: Clareview Road, near Lisnarrick, 1947; and Imeroo Crossroads, NW of Tonyglaskan Bridge, 1953. These three sites lie on the shores of Lough Erne or to the east of it and the Revised Typescript Flora described the habitats as, "woods and hedgerows".

The 2004 Bramble Atlas hectad map shows that R. nessensis is the third most frequent and widespread microspecies of Subsection Rubus in Britain behind R. plicatus and R. scissus. In Ireland, it is poorly recorded, however, appearing in only ten widely scattered hectads. In Britain, R. nessensis is chiefly a plant of damp wooded riversides, where it forms robust thickets. The few Fermanagh records fit this habitat pattern reasonably well, including both damp lakeshore woodland and roadside hedges. If we generalise the habitat range of all the suberect brambles occurring in Fermanagh, they are inclined towards lime-rich, damp or wet, shady situations on or near lakeshores, or along roadside hedges, rather than in the cut-over peat workings proposed by Hackney et al. in FNEI 3.

Growth form and preferred habitats

Brambles or Blackberries are all-too-familiar, strongly invasive, dominant, stand-forming, woody polycarpic perennials 3-7 m tall, with viciously sharp, spiny, arching, usually biennial branches and 3-5 foliate, semi-evergreen leaves. The Revised Typescript Flora of MCM & D had many Rubus fruticosus segregates identified by the bramble referee W.C.R. Watson and these are listed below. Very little recent work has been done on Fermanagh's brambles, most recorders simply listing these clothes-clinging plants as this species aggregate.

The name R. fruticosus agg. covers all the multiple segregates, the most common habitats of which are hedgerows and wayside banks. Any disturbed, open, rocky, or waste ground is rapidly colonised by them when neglected and undisturbed for any length of time greater than a few months. This includes lowland pastures and woodland, the latter especially after felling, fire or wind-throw opens up the canopy. Brambles are most abundant on damp to wet acid soils and comparatively few microspecies grow on chalk or limestone. However, given a moderate level of vegetation disturbance and ample moisture, R. fruticosus agg. microspecies can grow on most soils, although they prefer more fertile conditions and do poorly on sandy or skeletal soils (Amor & Richardson 1980).

Variation, apomixis and taxonomic difficulties

Members of the R. fruticosus agg. belong to the subgenus Rubus and are extremely plastic in growth form and morphology to a wide range of environmental factors including light levels, which together with the high level of genetic variation inherent in the apomictic (non-standard) seed production they exhibit, that makes identification very complex and difficult and, in B & I, largely a matter for a small number of bramble specialists. Thus the R. fruticosus agg. comprises a complex group of more than 330 microspecies or agamospecies in B & I and over 2,000 worldwide (Amor & Richardson 1980; Edees & Newton 1988). The most recent count is now 353 microspecies for B & I (Sell & Murrell 2014), of which 100 have been found in Ireland mainly by two specialists, D.E. Allen and A. Newton (Newton & Randall 2004). The genus Rubus is arranged into five subgenera and very many sections and subsections, making it a little less confusing and bewildering for the uninitiated.

Apart from one diploid species that reproduces in a normal sexual manner, R. ulmifolius (Common Bramble), all other Rubus microspecies are polyploids having multiple sets of chromosomes. The majority (c 91%) are tetraploids (2n=28) and the rest range in a series from triploids to octoploids (ie 2n=21 to 56). The complications only start there, as in order to set fertile seed most Rubus flowers require pollination with viable pollen (some cross- others self-pollination), to stimulate seed production, which is an asexual process, ie agamospermy is involved and the development of the embryo is autonomous, arising always and entirely from maternally derived tissues.

Seed reproduction, where there is a requirement for pollination of the stigma, but no fertilization of a female gamete takes place, is called 'pseudogamy' (ie false marriage). Seed-formation in this situation is a form of asexual reproduction, ie it gives rise to seeds without sex and it is described as apomictic or agamospermous. Essentially, this is clonal reproduction by seed, giving the plant some of the advantages of seed formation (eg a 'clean egg' without any viral or genetic load, plus ease of dispersal and dormancy), but doing so by the genetic equivalent of vegetative reproduction (Richards 1997). Self-pollinating (autogamous) pseudogamous Rubus apomicts will be most successful in pollen-limited environments (eg arctic and alpine sites), as they are independent of pollinators (Richards 1997).

A consequence of apomixis and agamospermy is that the progeny are genetically identical to the female parent plant. However, in some Rubus microspecies a proportion of pollen is viable, so that agamospermy remains facultative, rather than obligate. Partial or facultative apomixis is much more common than obligatory as we can never be certain that sexual reproduction is totally ruled out (Briggs & Walters 1997). Thus, from time-to-time sexual reproduction involving fertile pollen and ovules does occur in microspecies within R. fruticosus agg., creating new hybrid microspecies genotypes that may then persist and reproduce agamospermously. In this way, a large number (over 2,000) of closely related microspecies have evolved over thousands of years, some dating back into the last ice-ages (Amor & Richardson 1980).

The large number of named microspecies in Rubus and the lack of standard sampling procedures used in the past to delimit them has led to a great deal of long-term confusion in their taxonomy and nomenclature (Amor & Richardson 1980). However, more recent research and field work in B & I has undoubtedly resolved some of the previously intractable identification and naming difficulties (Edees & Newton 1988; Sell & Murrell 2014).

Fermanagh occurrence

This aggregate has been recorded in 501 tetrads throughout Fermanagh, representing 94.9% of the squares in the VC. The aggregate is the 17th most frequently recorded taxon in the Fermanagh Flora Database, lying between Mentha aquatica (Water Mint) and Hedera helix (Common Ivy). It ranks third in the VC in terms of number of tetrads in which it has been found, immediately after Juncus effusus (Soft-rush) and Ranunculus repens (Creeping Buttercup). Like these, it too has a very wide ecological tolerance and it is most frequent to almost ubiquitous in lowland areas below 300 m, apart from purely aquatic or wet peat situations. Nevertheless, R. fruticosus agg. is mainly found on neglected, derelict or ill-managed roadside banks, hedgerows, margins of woods, heaths and moors, scrub thickets and in rough grassland on rocky, more or less ungrazed or unmown ground.

Almost all brambles of this aggregate are long-lived, clonal entities and they are produced by the strongly predominant vegetative reproduction that characterises this group. In our mild, damp climate, the leaves remain alive and functional over the entire winter period, presumably adding to the already great vegetative vigour of the plants. Strongly rooted crowns produce two to six arching woody shoots, well protected from browsers by large numbers of stout thorns and prickles. Despite this heavy armour, horses appear to relish soft, young, bramble shoots and they will sometimes tackle older foliage too.

Vegetative reproduction

Towards the middle or end of the growing season, arching branches root and form an overwintering resting bud when their tips touch the ground one or more metres distant from the original crown. Underground spreading adventitious shoots (suckers) may also be produced occasionally by roots in better, deeper soils (Amor & Richardson 1980). The individual woody stems usually persist for only two or three years but the plant has meantime produced sufficient younger stems to continue its invasive strategy or dominance of the site (Grime et al. 1988). Bramble can produce root suckers from a depth of 45 cm, which makes it difficult or almost impossible to eradicate the species from ground of any real scale by physical cutting, mowing and grubbing (Amor & Richardson 1980).

Flowering reproduction

Flowering branches are formed on canes more than one year old, usually second year canes. The inflorescence is a leafy elongated rounded or pyramidal cyme, usually containing around 20 flowers. The white- or pink-petalled flowers are hermaphrodite (perfect), actinomorphic (regular), 5-merous and 2-3 cm in diameter. Numerous stamens with slender filaments and versatile anthers surround the many free carpels, each of which contains two ovules, only one of which develops. Pollination is essential to both fruit and seed production but, as mentioned above, there is no sexual fusion (ie pseudogamy occurs). Having said this, it is reckoned that some of the tetraploid microspecies may be capable of occasional true sexual reproduction (Sell & Murrell 2014).

The flowers provide both nectar (partly concealed) and pollen as insect food and attract an abundance of visitors, including flies, bees, wasps, beetles, butterflies and moths (Proctor & Yeo 1973).

The seed becomes enclosed in the familiar shiny black edible drupe that in multiples form the blackberry fruit-cluster on a conical receptacle or torus. In contrast to raspberries, the blackberry fruit-cluster does not separate from the receptacle.

The variation, vigour and ubiquity of brambles highlights the success partial agamospermy is for them as a breeding system, perhaps particularly well adapted and flexible enough for the peculiar, occasional long-term, repeating kind of unstable habitats they most frequent, such as gaps in forest canopy opened up by the death of old trees or by wind-throw (Proctor & Yeo 1973).

A small proportion of the bramble edible fruit clusters are eaten by birds, mammals (including foxes) and humans, providing internal transport for the bramble seed to fresh sites. Fortunately, in terms of limiting its invasiveness, regeneration from seed is infrequent, much of it apparently being non-viable; thus seedling establishment is poor. Despite the infrequency of seedling establishment, seed transport is important, enabling the plant to colonise newly available sites offering suitable habitat (Amor & Richardson 1980).

The flowering shoots have indeterminate growth and canes frequently form daughter plants in autumn by their tips when they touch the ground and root, providing an additional source of vegetative reproduction and giving rise to new plants in the following spring.

Weed control

Bramble plants are very difficult to physically eradicate, being difficult to uproot and capable of regenerating from small root fragments left in the soil. However, a very specific systemic herbicide for woody plants is available and works well against it, although it requires at least two applications per year for several years to be effective. Spraying top growth in summer, followed by burning dead canes in winter and respraying more thoroughly the following spring, offers a good measure of control (Amor & Richardson 1980).

British and Irish occurrence

Bramble is very common and widespread throughout both islands, except on the wettest, driest and highest ground. It has probably lost some populations due to the removal of hedgerows when farmers increase the size of arable and pasture fields, but it will have benefited from site disturbance around motorways and forestry operations. Together with other invasive weeds like Ivy (Hedera helix) and Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) the nutrition of the species has benefitted from widespread environmental pollution with ammonia and nitrous oxides from agricultural slurry spreading and from general traffic exhausts (D.J. McCosh, in: Preston et al. 2002).

European and world occurrence

R. fruticosus agg. is common and widespread throughout Europe, the Middle East and NW Africa. Cultivated varieties have been introduced to S Africa, the E & W of N America, SW, SE & W Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand for fruit and other purposes including hedging and soil stabilization. In many instances, the introduced material escaped into native vegetation and has become a serious invasive weed (Amor & Richardson 1980).