Evergreen Blackberry, Cutleaf Blackberry       RU-bus la-sin-i-AA-tus

• Deciduous shrub, erect to semi-erect, stems tailing or climbing to 10 ft (3 m) in length, angled, covered with many large, curved prickles ("thorns").  Leaves alternate, palametly compound, 3-5 leaflets, each with long slender, toothed lobes, green to reddish-green above, paler and pubescent below; petiole and midrib below prickly.  Stems or canes are biennial, the first-year stems (primocanes) produce only leaves; bud from these canes form the flowering canes (floricanes) the following year.  Flowers are pink to white, in large terminal prickly clusters (panicles).  Fruit is an aggregate of small black druplets, to 2 cm long, sweet.
• Sun.    Not fussy, grows in a wide range of sites.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 5   A native of Eurasia, but it has become widely naturalized in North America; i.e., naturalized - invasive.  In the Northwest it ranges from British Columbia to northern California west of the Cascades, and eastward to Idaho.   It is also found in New England and westward to Michigan and southward to the Middle Atlantic States.  It has become established locally in parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.  Evergreen blackberry produces numerous adventitious root suckers, and also spreads rapidly as above ground vegetation roots at the nodes.
• laciniatus: deeply cut, the leaflets