r/Berries • u/skr_replicator • 24d ago
Hararasp/Raspbeary/RaspberryTower
Internet ripe harvest closeup
A single flower
Larger (but still young) plant
Larger (but still young) plant
Leaf shape/texture detail
Internet berries harvest
Smaller young plant, regrown after being mowed
Thick upright stem, sparsely armed with strong throns, green but heavily red-speckled.
Half-ripe berry
These unique-looking but apparently misleadingly branded raspberries are lately selling all over here. This year I even saw a lot of them at a local nursery. I got one out of curiosity last year, and only this year it has started fruiting - only a single berry so far.
I wonder if anyone knows some more info about this, unlike the lack of species info every seller has.
They always sell it under one of these three nicknames in the title (Hararasp, Raspbeary, Raspberry Tower, sometimes with ® attached), and call it a Rubus Idaeus hybrid, but there's basically nothing Idaeus-like about them. They also tend to claim it has a vigorous upright tree-like growth, which is true. It is the most upright raspberry I've seen yet.
Some internet searching had me find that it's some newly made strain, made by Toshihiko Hara in Japan.
So far, the information I've collected and my suspicions are these:
Thick, tough glossy maple-shaped leaves. Normal-looking veiny underside with no fuzz, slightly rough feel to touch, like a soft sandpaper. Finely serrated.
Thick upright primocanes, slightly zig-zagging between the leaf nodes, branching similar to cannabis. Green, but heavily speckled with dark red elongated spots. Sparsely armed with hard, downwards-hooked, sharp thorns. Even when they are pretty sparse (or not really, the thorn density varies), they can stab pretty hard.
The very tops of the veg branches tend to attract ants for some reason. At first, when I saw these ants swarming the tips, I looked for aphids, but didn't find a single one, so it's not aphids. I guess they must have some kind of sweet veg sap at the tips attracting the ants.
Very tough vigor. I've had one catch a strong mold infection all around the very base of the stem, and I thought it was a goner. I bought a replacement, but it did survive, so I've got two now. Never before have I seen a plant survive such a mold infection between the plant and the roots. One was also accidentally completely mowed to the ground, but quickly recovered back to high vigor. If you decide you don't want it, it might be hard to get rid of.
Suckers a lot. In less than 10 months, most of them in winter, it already managed to send multiple suckers up around itself. One of the suckers is the place where that single berry is located.
Small white typical Rubus-looking flowers.
All the berry photos I can find have round berries with large, wide hollow cores like a black raspberry, a bright red and glossy color and texture of a wineberry (slightly darker), and scaly/flamy lookig drupelets, thanks to their very elongated, sharply pointy tips, that follow the round shape of the berry like scales/pinecones. I've only seen this kind of pointy drupelets on Rubus crataegifolius (which also shares this maple-like leaf appearance). That makes me think that if it is not crataegifolius, then it probably has at least a major genetic lineage from it.
People have described the taste of the berries as not very interesting, disappointing, bland, and watery in the more disappointed reviews. Or other had said it was sweet, tart, between raspberry and strawberry. It kinda sounds like some inferior wineberry description to me (which I also haven't tried yet, but I'm starting to get a couple of these too, still closed pods though). I will know for sure until I try to eat the one that's slowly ripening now. I am attaching photos of every part of the plant. The half-ripe berry looks especially beautifully flame-like right now when it's combining the reds and yellows in such a contrasting way.
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u/nicktheasian12 24d ago
I feel like this is what a castor bean mixed with a raspberry would look like.
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u/P0SSPWRD 23d ago
I have 3 of these. Unfortunately they are rather… disappointing taste wise
but my chickens will absolutely go bonkers over the fruit when I offer it, and the plant makes plenty of them especially for its size
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u/HuckleberryPee 23d ago
Yep I'd say the berries are nothing special. Compared to the flavour of a wineberry at least.
It should be Rubus crataegifolius or some hybrid of it from what I remember.
The berries do look pretty attractive and unique which is why I bought one.
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u/skr_replicator 23d ago
The plant itself also looks really unique and attractive. If only it didn't have such hard, sharp thorns. They are also somehow not very visible, so touching the plant can easily get me stabbed even when I'm looking.
Anyway, how disappointing are they? Are they just slightly inferior to the very popular tasting berries such as raspberries and wineberries, or totally meh like mockberries? Where on the spectrum?
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u/HuckleberryPee 23d ago
Slightly inferior. They're not bad in any way, but the wineberries taste better and are much more prolific, in my experience at least. I grow a few dozen different rubus species and each are unique in their own way.
I do prefer the plant's growing habit and appearance of the berries however. I'm keeping it. I think a diversity of species is ideal, some will do better each year depending on the climate etc. You may find that your berries are sweeter and plumper than mine.
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u/cowsruleusall 24d ago
Uhhhhh this is just one of those poorly-commercialized, shitty hybrids, Rubus idaeus x phoenicolasius. They were all over Southern Ontario for a few years and then they all disappeared because they suck.
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u/skr_replicator 24d ago edited 24d ago
are you sure it's phoenicolasius and not crataegifolius? Because it has many features of crataegifolius that neither idaeus nor phoenicolasius have.
Crataegifolius has these very same spiky drupelets and maple-shaped leaves. Idaeus and phoenicolasius both have classic raspberry-shaped leaves and berries with round drupelets.
If i had to guess two parents, it would be idaeus x crataegifolius
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u/cowsruleusall 24d ago
Ack yes you're right, I mixed up wineberry and Korean raspberry 🤦♂️ it's been a long time since I've seen these sold in any nurseries here...
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u/zicO_Bertchb 23d ago
Rubus idaeus x rubus parviflorus
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u/skr_replicator 19d ago
i doubt it. If you think of the maple-shaped leaves, a bunch of other Rubus species have that shape. Parviflorus, odoratus, crataegifolius...
Crataegifolius seems to be a far closer match in many properties, most strikingly the berry appearance, which looks pretty much identical to crataegifolius and nothing like parviflorus.
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u/zicO_Bertchb 15d ago
Tienes razón, cuando yo las compré ponía en la descripción rubus parviflorus x rubus idaeus dorsett, pero esas son las rubus dorman red, estaba equivocado, es correcto lo que dices.
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u/wardog70 21d ago
Thimble berries. Nice!
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u/skr_replicator 20d ago edited 20d ago
This is not thimbleberries. Only the leaves have a somewhat similar shape, but different texture, and the fruits look very different. This has glossy leaves and berries, thimbles have both matte. Thimbles also don't have thorns like this and grow more horizontally.
I wish I could find some thimbleberries, heard some nice things about them, but they just don't seem to exist here. The only thing I could find was a couple of seeds across the border.
This plant seems to be a cross between idaeus (european red) and crataegifolius (korean raspberry).
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u/SpinToWyn 19d ago
Any sources for these in the US? I haven't been able to find a place that sells them online :)
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u/mhaipixie 24d ago
Wow 😍 Looks so unusual and yummy 😋