Preserving Local History...In Blackberry Form

There's a park in Pleasant Grove, Utah, that I lived in for ten years which has a park named Anderson Park after the family that sold it to the city in 1971.

It was a plum orchard with a few apples, and the deal was that the city needed to keep the park a wooded area suitable for camping and scout activities.

The plums are great. An old-time prune plum still great for fresh eating and some seedlings that have grown over the last 6 decades which have provided some interesting variation. Those trees aren't going anywhere, anytime soon, but I do intend to pull some scion and root stock out of there since they're proven winners.

But, the real treat from Anderson Park is the blackberry patch that's been on-site since before the Andersons sold the land.

Whatever variety they started with, it's its own thing now, after 60+ years of tip-rooting and self-seeding, and it's an amazing blackberry.

Characteristics:
- Wildly vigorous trailing vines with gnarly thorns
- Massively productive
- Medium sized berries smaller than most ARK and ORUS releases
- Intense, fruity, wild flavor
- Large seeds (only drawback I would say)
- Good for fresh eating, excellent jelly and syrup

See, it used to dominate a 10' tall chainlink along at least 150' of the park boundary, and towered up to 20' tall and was probably 50' wide as well, a true monster patch.

Now, the fence is gone and what's left is a 30' x 20' patch sprawling on the ground and probably accidentally there after a failure to eradicate out of a wetland area to make way for some residential development and access where there used to be an alfalfa field and the fence.

I always intended on coming to dig some plants up to add to my system, because I love the berries and because it's a true, locally adapted cultivar which can handle Utah's alkaline soils, extreme temperature variation, and drought-stricken summers with no disease. That's genetic stock worth saving.

So, I went and dug some up this weekend, just to make sure I didn't lose my opportunity. It's not the ideal time to do this, so hopefully the plants will be alright, but I felt the need to move pressing on me.

I'll post some pictures below.

Here are the photos: