The blackberry is a delicious berry in the Rubus genus and the Rosaceae family. The fruit are botanically termed an aggregate fruit and they are produced on plants that typically have biennial canes and perennial roots. The blackberries and raspberries are often called caneberries or brambles.

It is a widespread, and well known group of several hundred species, many of which are closely related apomictic microspecies native throughout the temperate Northern hemisphere and South America. Blackberries are perennial plants which typically bear biennial stems ("canes") from the perennial root system. In its first year, a new stem, the primocane, grows vigorously to its full length of 3-6 m (in some cases, up to 9m), arching or trailing along the ground and bearing large palmately compound leaves with five or seven leaflets; it does not produce any flowers.

In its second year, the cane becomes a floricane and the stem does not grow longer, but the flower buds break to produce flowering laterals, which bear smaller leaves with three or five leaflets. First and second year shoots are usually spiny with numerous short curved very sharp thorns (thornless cultivars have been developed purposefully). Recently the University of Arkansas has developed primocane fruiting blackberries that grow and flower on first year growth much as the primocane (also called fall bearing or everbearing) fruiting red raspberries.

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