From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
Also bramble. A shiny black fruit, Rubus ulmifolius, that decorates country hedgerows in late summer and early autumn, the blackberry has been cultivated for more than 100 years in North America, although it is not considered worth the trouble anywhere else in the world. At first, it was called a brambleberry or bramble (as it still is in England) and was regarded as a nuisance, even in the colonies. Beginning in the 1830s, however, it became quite popular and went into pie and the molded dessert flummery. Eaten fresh, blackberries make a tart, refreshing dessert, but they are more often preserved as jam or jelly. Blackberries and dewberries (two relations of the rose and the raspberry) are virtually indistinguishable; the main differences between them being that blackberries are larger, juicier and slightly sweeter.
