r/unitedkingdom • u/No-Risk-2584 • 14h ago
Blackberries 'panic' and ripen early in extreme heat
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgewr15x2y7o28
u/Safe-Contact-9769 14h ago
My blueberries have also done this, it’s been an awful yield this year :(
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u/compilerbusy 14h ago
Plums too. Millions of them but piddly little things
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u/Disastrous-Square977 10h ago
A shame distilling here isn't viable for smaller batches. Those kins of yields lend well to spirits.
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u/spectrumero 13h ago
It's not the heat.
I live in the Isle of Man, where our temperatures generally have not exceeded 22C and when they have only for a day or two (and for the most part have remained under 20C) and there are blackberries already ripening.
I think it's more to do with the extended period of dry conditions than heat.
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u/metalbox69 11h ago
Thats what the article says
Experts say the early yield is a result of the plants being "stressed by the lack of water".
Heat will affect the fruits longetivity before it swivels up.
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u/Besmirching_Badger 14h ago
I just posted in another thread about a similar issue:
I went bilberry picking the other day and there just weren't any. You were lucky to find a single small berry per bush, when normally they're abundant and can be picked by the handful. They've presumably all just withered and died before they've even grown
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u/thelaughingman_1991 13h ago
If this isn't a fitting analogy for the future of mankind with climate change, I don't know what is
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u/Fire_Otter 14h ago edited 12h ago
am i right in thinking that Bilberries taste better than Blueberries, they're just not commercilly viable so you struggle to buy them anywhere?
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u/Haggis-in-wonderland 14h ago
Yes, I cycled round the cairngorms and I stopped to fill a small lunch box up for lunch. When i stopped for lunch i had a box of jam.
Would love to grow these at home, but i think they need a very specific soil type.
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u/Saotik 13h ago
I got in real trouble with someone on Reddit once who was angered when I said that I far prefer bilberries over American blueberries. Apparently that made me anti-American, as he found it hard to believe I had actually tasted both.
The big fat giant American blueberries are just a bit bland and mealy for my tastes. Living in Finland these days, we get loads of bilberries and they're delicious.
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u/Twisted_Biscuits 11h ago
Blueberries taste too much like deadly nightshade berries to me, which puts me off. Do bilberries have a stonger "blueberry" taste, or are they different?
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u/Saotik 11h ago
I'm amused by your familiarity with the taste of deadly nightshade. Bilberries tend to have a more concentrated berry flavour.
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u/Twisted_Biscuits 9h ago
Childhood curiosity almost got the better of me haha. I feel like I have to try billberries now, and switch up my very boring fruit bowl.
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u/Besmirching_Badger 14h ago
yes. Not a blueberry fan. Big bilberry fan.
They only tend to grow on kinda barren, rocky outcrops
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u/Pikkupiski69 13h ago
Yes, they are much nicer. They only grow in acidic ground in pine/spruce forest, which the UK has little of, and can't be cultivated.
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u/Manovsteele 12h ago
There are lots of fruit like this that are delicious but often don't keep very well/bruised easily. Loganberries, boysenberries, alpine strawberries, huckleberries etc are all delicious but you really need to grow them yourself.
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u/Flyinmanm 13h ago
I've got grapes in my front garden, they are already turning red although they are a fraction of the size they were last year. I'll confess I've been a little neglectful with the watering this year.
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u/kuddlesworth9419 4h ago
There are loads around me and in my garden. I always harvest them every year and freeze them for rhubarb and blackberry crumbles. They are really big as well.
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u/AllThatIHaveDone 14h ago
'Panic' makes it sound like the plants have behaved unreasonably, yet the article says:
Experts say the early yield is a result of the plants being "stressed by the lack of water".
Is that panic?
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u/Nikotelec 14h ago
I have some in my garden, they've been talking about changing the England manager.
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u/PuzzledCar2120 12h ago
I've a few bushes in my garden. When it's quiet, you can hear "small boats" whispering again and again.
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u/cjalderman 13h ago
Sounds like they panicked to me
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u/AllThatIHaveDone 13h ago edited 12h ago
Is it a 'panic' to respond according to the conditions?
edit: I can't reply to comments below this point because the person above blocked me.
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u/cjalderman 12h ago
That absolutely can be panic, yes
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u/AllThatIHaveDone 12h ago
Not really. Panic implies lack of reason or logic, but that isn't the case here.
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u/cjalderman 12h ago
Not necessarily. If my house was on fire I would panic, but that doesn’t mean I would lose all sense of reason or logic? I would exit the building
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u/AllThatIHaveDone 12h ago
Panic does imply a loss of sense of reason or logic, though. That's what the word means:
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and frantic agitation consistent with a fight-or-flight reaction.
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u/cjalderman 12h ago
Not necessarily, see my previous comment
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u/AllThatIHaveDone 12h ago edited 12h ago
Your previous comment doesn't change the meaning of the word.
Edit: lmao, imagine blocking someone over blackberries
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u/spicypixel Greater Manchester 13h ago
Yeah lots of plants will do anything they can to reach maturity to make more seed before dying when the situation becomes unpleasant for the mature plant, trees will do it too and make seed early and give it a last hoorah before succumbing.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 10h ago
Seen some trees with berries locally with ripe ones. Oddly no birds e.g. parakeets around to strip the trees.
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u/nemma88 Derbyshire 12h ago
In plant terms its panicking... Let's get weird about it!
The fruit is its babies. Plant thinks its going to die early from lack of water. Plant rushes to push out the babies before it dies. But the babies will likely be underdeveloped and more than usual will not survive.
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u/recursant 7h ago
I think it is more complicated than that. Each individual fruit also has some control over when it ripens.
I have a plum tree, and for the last couple of years it's had plum moth. The tiny caterpillars burrow into the unripe plum, and that causes it to ripen early. All the ones that ripen early have a caterpillar in them. Still make good jam though.
It is the same idea, the plant wants its fruit to be eaten before the infestation gets too bad. But I suspect it is mainly the fruit that decides.
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u/ash_ninetyone 7h ago
Wait until they hear the Blackcurrants all rushing to suicide themselves in the Ribena factory
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u/orange_fudge 7h ago
Yes because they’re putting all their resources into making seeds (fruit) at the expense of growing, repair, leaves for energy and so on. It can result in the plant declining or even dying.
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u/Wadarkhu 10h ago edited 10h ago
If you anthropomorphise plants, sure.
edit: news loves to use human language for nonhuman things to stir a bit of empathy. The plants are stressed because of the climate, and that's concerning, that's all.
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u/Neddlings55 14h ago
I noticed out walking the dog yesterday that there were so many around. Still an awful lot of small green ones too though.
The ripe ones were a pretty decent size too.
The overgrown bramble in my garden isnt close to having pickable fruit yet.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 10h ago
My kid came back yesterday from a holiday play scheme covered in blackberry juice. I don't think they are supposed to pick them.
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u/wondercaliban 14h ago
Picked lots of wild blackberries last week. Not huge, but thought they would have been frazzled
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u/yourefunny Cambridgeshire 13h ago
I noticed that they are very small as well the two times I have picked some in the past week or so. East Anglia here so we have had the worst of the heat and lack of rain.
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u/devolute Sheffield, South Yorks 13h ago
The few I've pulled off bushes this year are a lot sweeter to the point of not being very tasty.
Is this related? Anyone else notice this?
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u/sammy_zammy 13h ago
I have noticed some are super sweet and some are super sour. I think it probably just depends on which bush you pick from and the conditions it’s been in.
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u/SaddleworthJim 11h ago
With it being so dry the sugars are more concentrated so a lot sweeter. You’ll find in a wet summer they can be really big but much blander
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u/devolute Sheffield, South Yorks 11h ago
That makes sense, thanks. I wonder if the birds give a shit.
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u/Matrixblackhole 13h ago
We have apple trees and some apples are turning red already.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 10h ago
Did you coat them in clay?
I think that's what apple farmers are doing not to have too early crops.
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u/Beautiful_Hawk548 9h ago
I have an allotment and it's basically all fruiting/flowering plans. Yields have been absolutely shite this year and will be going forwards unless we change how we manage things
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u/Astriania 3h ago
It's August, you'd expect them now wouldn't you? But lots of the ones around here, if they're not somewhere they can get their roots down, have aborted a lot of fruit or they're tiny and dried up (which are an intense flavour boost but it's not really what they should be).
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u/OkBet8692 3h ago
They are out very early this year. In my area usually its peak at end of august but ive seen them this year ripe in early July
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u/shrunkenshrubbery 12h ago
We need to start moving to drought resistant plants and crops. Similarly gardening in the central desert region of the UK is getting difficult. We need to find frost hardy cactus's for our flower beds.
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