Sambar Browse Plants - The Blackberries

I suspect that every sambar hunter, and most Australians too, would know what the noxious and invasive weed blackberry looks like and for this reason I have been slow to feature it in this series on sambar browse plants.

Although most people think of ‘blackberry’ as a single entity, there are in fact numerous different species present in Australia, all originating from Britain and mainland Europe. Blackberry now grows throughout all of the higher rainfall regions of Victoria, particularly in bushland, forest plantations, along streams and on grazing land. As every deer hunter and trout fisherman would know, it is extremely common along river and creek banks, usually as an almost impenetrable tangle of live and dead canes.

Blackberry is a long-lived invasive plant. In lowland areas, it tends to retain most of its leaves through the winter but in higher-elevation country it can be almost bare of leaves over the winter. New canes are produced each spring from the central root system, are about a centimetre thick and can grow several metres in a season. Canes carry large prickles that make pushing through a blackberry patch by humans difficult or impossible. Flowers and fruit are produced by second year canes after which these fruiting canes die off. Because canes die after their second year, mature blackberry patches contain plenty of dead material.

Leaves are dark green on the top side and lighter green underneath, with small teeth around the edges. There may be short prickles on the leaf stalks and the underside of veins. Flowers are produced in the spring, are two to three centimetres in diameter and grow in clusters, with five white or pale pink petals. Berries follow the flowers, changing colour from green to red to black as they ripen in late summer.

As mentioned in a previous magazine, blackberry is not to be confused with native raspberry, a plant with similar characteristics but on a much smaller scale and without the propensity to invade.

Blackberry foliage is heavily used by sambar and it seems that it is a key food source in many areas. In the spring, it is common to see fresh new growth pruned of leaves and the soft tips of canes chewed off right back to a centimetre-thick stub. During the summer months, the mature foliage is targeted by deer and it is common to see them wading rivers feeding on the overhanging canes. Although sambar are often blamed for spreading blackberry seeds, any role that they have in this is probably minimal compared to that of foxes, emus and other introduced and native birds. It is probably in winter that blackberry foliage really comes into its own as a feed source as other shrubs and grasses in sambar country stop growing due to the cold.

Despite humans finding blackberry patches almost impenetrable, sambar seem to be able to make tunnels and paths through them with ease while travelling, feeding or escaping a hunter and there are plenty of stories of sambar bedded deep within their shelter.

From a sambar hunter’s perspective blackberry is both a blessing and a curse – a blessing because of its value as a feed source for the animals and a curse because it often makes getting around in sambar country difficult, slow and often painful.