On Thu, 2 Nov 2006 the sculptor wrote:

How can I get my wine berry to grow rampantly..... I have had it
planted now for two years and only had five fruits from it and it looks
sick as a dog in comparison to other wine berries I have seen.


I've been growing Japanese Wineberry for the last forty years. Its habit
is akin to the blackberry and I propagate it in the same way by burying
growing tips in the ground. I was originally given a root by an uncle
back in 1965 when I was first married and all the plants I have now are
descended from that root, despite moving house several times. And that
uncle took a cutting from one that another uncle had back in the 1930s,
which means that it has been grown in the UK for nearly eighty years to
my knowledge.

I have found that it either likes the ground it is in, which case it
grows vigorously, or it doesn't, in which case it dies! I've tried to
get it to take in my garden in France but all attempts have failed so
far.

All that I have read on the "Rubus phoenicolasius" has not been entirely
accurate. For instance, Shewell-Cooper in his contribution to the 1960s
edition of the Reader's Digest Book of the Garden says that all fruits
on a truss ripen together. They don't. And the page that Jenny quoted
says this: "This is a climbing shrub that produces large trusses of
unbelievably sweet orange red to dark red berries of delicious flavour."
The flavour is very nondescript. I wonder if that is because it needs a
warmer climate than that in the UK. Certainly the berries look pretty
but they are not as strongly flavoured as the raspberry or the
blackberry.

By the way, Jenny, the Blackmoor Nurseries article on the Wineberry
appears to have been taken, including the photograph, from an article in
the Daily Telegraph in July, 2004:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening...S&grid=P8&xml=
/gardening/2004/07/31/ghowto31.xml

I comment on this only because the photograph looks nothing like the
Wineberry - unless it's due to lack of definition!

I made some jelly this year from wineberries. The flavour was so poor
that I had to add it to some redcurrants to make it palatable. Some
thirty years ago I tried to make wine from them (well, they *are* called
wineberries!!) but that also was very poor.

Its chief virtue is that it is very pretty. It is more decorative than
either the blackberry or the raspberry, both when it is growing and when
it is bearing fruit. Is it Japanese? I don't know. Is it used for making
wine? No. I think it's as much a misnomer as the Cor Anglais which isn't
a horn nor is it English!

So, Mr Sculptor, I'm not sure I've answered your question but I would
suggest putting plenty of organic matter down to see if that encourages
it.

David

--
David Rance http://www.mesnil.demon.co.uk
Fido Address: 2:252/110 writing from Caversham, Reading, UK