Boysenberry

Description

Boysenberries grow on low, trailing plants. It is a large aggregate fruit with a deep maroon color, weighing 8 g and containing large seeds. The fruits are characterized by their soft texture, thin skins, and sweet-tart flavor. Mature fruits leak juice very easily and can start to decay within a few days of harvest.

Cultivation

The exact origins of the boysenberry are unclear, but the most definite records trace the plant as it is known today back to grower Rudolph Boysen, who obtained the dewberry–loganberry parent from the farm of John Lubben.{{cite web

In the late 1920s, George M. Darrow of the United States Department of Agriculture began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown on Boysen's farm in Anaheim, California. Darrow enlisted the help of Walter Knott, another farmer, who was known as a berry expert. Knott had never heard of the new berry, but he agreed to help Darrow in his search.

Darrow and Knott learned that Boysen had abandoned his growing experiments several years earlier and sold his farm. Undaunted by this news, Darrow and Knott headed out to Boysen's old farm, on which they found several frail vines surviving in a field choked with weeds. They transplanted the vines to Knott's farm in Buena Park, California, where he nurtured them back to fruit-bearing health. Walter Knott was the first to commercially cultivate the berry in Southern California.

He began selling the berries at his farm stand in 1932 and soon noticed that people kept returning to buy the large, tasty berries. When asked what they were called, Knott said, "Boysenberries", after their originator.{{cite web |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090720054917/http://www.knotts.com/coinfo/history/index.shtml |url-status = dead |archive-date = 2009-07-20 |access-date = 2008-02-22

By 1940, 599 acres of land in California were dedicated to boysenberries. The number dipped during World War II but peaked again in the 1950s at about 2400 acre, to the point where boysenberry crops exceeded those of the (previously) more common raspberry and blackberry. By the 1960s, the boysenberry began to fall out of favor due to a combination of being difficult to cultivate, susceptible to fungal diseases in coastal growing areas, and too soft and delicate to easily ship without damage, as well as having a short season of availability compared with newer cultivars. In the 1980s, breeding efforts in New Zealand combined cultivars and germplasm from California with Scottish sources to create five new thornless varieties.

As of the early 2000s, fresh boysenberries were generally only grown for market by smaller California farmers and sold from local farm stands and markets.

Cultivars

Since 2007, a hybrid variety called the "Newberry" or "Ruby Boysen", was developed to overcome cultivation challenges that led to the decline in boysenberry popularity, and was marketed through farm markets and retailers in California.

The 'Nectar' cultivar of boysenberry should not be confused with the nectarberry, Rubus arcticus, a plant native to arctic swamps.

References

References

1. Vaughan, John Griffith. (2009). "The New Oxford Book of Food Plants". Oxford University Press.
2. Karp, David. (2010-05-27). "Boysenberry, a California treasure". [[Los Angeles Times]].
3. (2008). "Temperate Fruit Crop Breeding: Germplasm to Genomics (pages 91-92)". Springer Science & Business Media.
4. (2008). "Oregon boysenberries". Oregon Raspberry and Blackberry Commission.
5. (2017). "Welcome to Berryfruit New Zealand". Berryfruit New Zealand.