North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [NAFEX] Rubus Tayberry

I had Tayberry for years here in Oregon and have concluded that because it was bred in Scotland, it needs a very cool, Scottish type climate to develop best flavor.  Here, it was similar enough to Loganberry, it wasn't worth the difference.  Also, the berry not only stayed attached to the core, the core tended to stay attached to the stem.  The result was that trying to pick it usually meant smashing it.  And yes, it is actually a raspberry-blackberry hybrid.   The Rubus genera has all sorts of strange numbers of chromosomes and if you choose parents with the right chromosome numbers, you can make all sorts of crosses.  
-Lon ROmbough
> Anyone who has ever eaten Tayberry sauce or jelly, wants to buy a tayberry plant.
>
> They grow very well in south coastal B.C. Last year was the first year we had
> winter damage (die-back of about 2' on the canes) 'cos we had a sudden drop intemp
> in December fro about 10°C  to -12°C. They will withstand -12°C if they are
> hardened up gradually.
>
> The negatives are that the core/hull stays with the fruit so if eating them fresh
> you will be spitting out the hull (as we spit out the seeds in the grapes) so they
> are better suited for cooking. I usually cook fruit and hull and strain the mess
> to get a juice which I make into jelly or sauce.
>
> Another negative is that it is very thorny - small hairlike thorns.
>
> Some would say that another negative is that the canes grow about 12' in a year so
> you need to have space.
>
> The positives are the flavour, low/no disease, low/no pests, aroma from a jar of
> jelly.
>
> We actually mix tayberry juice with black currant juice and sometimes with
> blackberry juice and raspberry juice to make a delicious sauce/juice.
>
> They are well worth growing, perhaps along a fence line.
>
> They were developed at the Scottish Crop Research Institute on the Tay River in
> Scotland, from a black raspberry (SCRI 626/7) and an Aurora blackberry.
>
> Raintree Nursery sells it and says it is a cross between a loganberry and a black
> raspberry. I'm pretty sure  the parent was not a loganberry.
>
> I had a thornless, but it died. I think the thornless is a chimera and any damage
> to the stem means the thorny variety will take over. The thorns are really not a
> problem.