My Rubus lineatus has produced five suckers this year. When I bought it and looked it up online, I don't remember reading anything about it suckering so freely. (In contrast to all the warnings I saw about Tetrapanax, which so far hasn't suckered at all.)
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| Rubus lineatus in the gravel garden, directly to the left of the gabion pillar |
I really should have known, given that it's a Rubus, which means it's a type of bramble/raspberry/blackberry relative. They came up pretty easily, possibly because they're still small. The roots that they were attached to were just under the surface. I potted up the three biggest ones and I'm going to see if maybe I can grow them on in pots and give them away at some point.
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| Five suckers growing up from the roots in the gravel |
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| One |
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| Two |
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| Three |
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| Four |
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| Five |
It's a wonderfully garden-worthy plant, with its pleated foliage that has a silvery underside. It's supposed to also get raspberry-like berries, but I haven't seen any sign of that yet. It has also proven to be drought-tolerant, because I've only watered it once this summer.
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| Lovely pleated leaves of Rubus lineatus, with the silvery underside of a new leaf emerging on the left |
I'll have to keep on top of it and remember to check every year for more suckers, because I really don't want that bed to fill up with an entire grove of them. And now I'm also worried that pulling them up will stimulate the mother
shrub to produce even more, rather like pruning stimulates branch
growth. Removing them was painless, but still...finding them was a surprise.
