Purple-Flowering Raspberry

Purple-Flowering Raspberry

Rubus odoratus

(ROO-bus) (oh-dor-AY-tus)

Synonyms: Flowering Raspberry, Virginia Raspberry

This wild beauty was spotted growing in between a garden and the road in kind of what I would consider a waste area. This was the first time I had seen this plant growing around here but we are in its natural range, which covers the eastern United States and parts of Canada. There were no berries but a good crop of flowers. The foliage is stately and handsome. This plant is very hardy, likes moisture and can spread rapidly. It grows to about 4 feet tall and has good deer resistance.

Sunday again so here is a bonus snapshot of a unusually colored Grape Hyacinth. In my never ending quest for variations on a common theme we have planted several mixtures of these flowers. It is always kind of fun and exciting to see what shades are going to come up. The fall bulb season looks good after we have secured several orders for the autumn.

Yesterday our little dry patch ended in a big way. We got several inches of rain and even a little hail. There was a tornado watch for several hours but thankfully we only ended up with some strong wind gusts that didn’t seem to do any local damage.

White Grape Hyacinth Muscari botryoides 'Album'

White Grape Hyacinth
Muscari botryoides 'Album'
(mus-KAR-ee) (bot-ROY-dees)
Hyacinthaceae

These pictures are from spring. The Grape Hyacinth is always a welcome sight to me in the spring. It is a reliable, hardy bloomer that naturalizes and spreads but in a way that is not weedy or invasive. Some people do consider it invasive but I really don’t mind it popping up in the garden. This white flowered form spreads a little less quickly and can be used on its own or, as I like, in combination with the blue flowered ones. The Grape Hyacinth is at home in borders, rock gardens, woodland gardens and even in lawns. If you do plant them in grass don’t cut the grass until the bulb foliage has turned brown. They are excellent cut flowers and are easy to force indoors. If you look at the top photo on this page you will see an example of ‘river’ planting with the blue type. One of my favorite local plantings of Muscari is at the Pepsico gardens in Westchester County. 1000's of blue Muscari planted under the White Birch forest. It really is lovely.


Muscari is native to Europe and Asia Minor and have been in cultivation since the mid-1500’s. There are several species of garden interest including Muscari latifolium, which has light and dark blue flowers on the same stem. Muscari armeniacum, which is most often thought of as the traditional ‘Grape Hyacinth’ and is the most recognizable. M. azureum and the less seen M. comosum also are species worth having in the garden. I have found them to reasonably deer resistant but have had them eaten before. The ‘Album’ type grows to about 6 to 8 inches tall and flower for several weeks.

I took these picture with my Nikon Coolpix 5400 and it was possibly the last time I used that camera. I should get it out again as I love using it. My friend, who is a fine photographer, was putting down Point and Shoot cameras the other day. He felt you needed your eye to a viewfinder in order to compose a shot properly. I had to disagree but basically kept the fact that I love taking flower photos with P&S cameras to myself. For the top picture I wouldn’t have ever been able to get that perspective with my DSLR. Well maybe if I had dug a hole for the camera to shoot up from and laid on my stomach. I also love the minimum focusing distance with the compact cameras; it is something under 2 inches with the 5400.