ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS: BLACKBERRIES CAN BE A BLESSING AND A CURSE

Since prehistoric times, man has both praised and cussed a couple of hundred members of the Rubus genus -- the blackberries of the world.

The wild shrubs of the blackberry family are both a blessing and a curse. They provide a bounty of some of the sweetest wild fruits available, but with their myriad of sharp thorns, they also slash and puncture the vulnerable hides of outdoor pedestrians who wander in their midst.

The blackberry bush is a bramble that, according to the specific variety, grows up to six feet in height. Along with clusters of three to five leaves, it produces white flowers in the spring, followed by juicy berries in early to middle summer.

Beginning very small and white, the berries progress to red, then finally black as they ripen -- and right about now is prime time for ripe fruit.

Blackberries were a popular summer mainstay food for early human cultures. Native to temperate regions of Asia, Europe and southern Africa as well as North America, they were important to pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer people.

Not only did blackberries feed these and later people, they at least were thought to keep them healthy. The ancient Greeks used them to treat diseases of mouth and throat and as a prevention for gout. (Come to think of it, I eat them and I've never once had gout!)

Later, blackberries were prescribed as remedies for kidney stones, tonsillitis and snakebite. (Good point: Spend enough time out in the bushes gathering blackberries and you might need a cure for snakebite.) Blackberry tea, brewed from the dried leaves, was a basic dysentery cure during the Civil War times.

Troubled by premature gray? An early fix on this was to boil blackberry leaves with lye, then soak your head in the resulting liquid. It's supposed to dye your hair nicely black.

Pioneer Americans, faced with an abundance of blackberries, ate them fresh, served them as a dessert with cream or wine, and made them into syrups, jams, pies, cobblers, cordials and wine. Lacking soda pop, early Americans squeezed the juice out of the berries and used it to make sorts of backwoods soft drinks called "blackberry shrub" or "fruit water."

Most of those uses have faded or vanished with time, but an awful lot of blackberries still go into fresh-backed cobblers and other desserts.

The thorny issue about blackberry plants is all those little spiny stickers on the stalks.

Blackberry plants are perennial, but each main branch or "cane" that comes up is a biennial. A thorn-bristling cane comes up one year, then sends out lateral branches the next. On the smaller, second-year branches grow the flowers, then the berries. After that, each cane dies -- but the wickedly sharp thorns remain on guard long after they cease to live.

Sun-loving blackberries crop up in open fields, along roadsides, hilltops and woods openings. Any time a tree dies and falls, opening the forest canopy to direct sunlight, blackberry bushes are among the first things to grow below.

Blackberry plants are an essential element to most thickets that are progressing from an abandoned field or meadow. Interweaving and bristling with spines -- perhaps only up to about a quarter-inch long, but needle-sharp nonetheless -- blackberry tangles provide one of the least pleasant walking habitats you'll encounter.

Try to wade through a blackberry thicket in jeans and a shirt and you'll quickly re-evaluate the terrain for another route. They're much of the reason that thick sticker-deflecting "briar-proof" clothing was invented for upland hunters.

Despite their flesh-prodding characteristics, now is the time berry-fanciers should be invading the brambles to harvest the wild fruits -- if only mostly around the edges.

The Fourth of July holiday is a signal to many for the time for ripe berries to begin. Though some are ready earlier, it's generally pretty accurate. For now and a short time to come, blackberries are at or near peak -- fingertip-sized ovals heavy with liquid, glossy black.

Soft berries that are ready to fall off the stems with the slightest touch are fully ripe. Those that are still rather firm and have to be popped loose are still on the green side. Any that still show reddish color also are underdone by the sun -- and green berries are sour.

The cautious blackberry stalker will wear a pair of gloves to minimize the thorn stabbings while gathering the wild fruit. And if he or she values any comfort, it also pays to spray down thoroughly with insect repellent before taking to the bushes.

Blackberry picking also is known in some circles as "trolling for chiggers." Without a bug spray precaution, the discomfort of briar punctures likewise will be accompanied by a legion of whelps on the lower body from chiggers, which find such thicket growth ideal habitat in which to find their own highly-prized food -- blackberry pickers.

~Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor of The Paducah Sun.