Rubus idaeus Autumn Passion - Raspberry

The Autumn Passion Raspberry is a repeat fruiting and particularly productive variety that produces large raspberries from August to October, which are dark red almost black when ripe. They are juicy, fruity in flavor, highly aromatic, with a pleasant, slightly resinous aroma. Planting is preferably done in autumn, in a fertile garden soil that remains slightly moist.

The Autumn Passion Raspberry belongs to the rose family.  It is a cousin of blackberries and wild roses. The wild raspberry (in Latin Rubus idaeus) is native to Europe and temperate Asia, where it grows in cool climates alongside elderberry, beech, or mountain ash, especially in mountain undergrowth, but also on the plains. It is a deciduous shrub with upright stems, forming a bush about 1.50 m in all directions. The stems are biennial, and unusually die after fruiting. It spreads from a perennial sucker stump, which produces new slightly prickly shoots every year. The plant has green leaves which are whitish-green and hairy on the underside. The flowering is highly melliferous. The white flowers are small ,1 to 2 cm (0.4 to 0.8 in) in diameter, grouped in small clusters of 10 to 12, and appear in several waves in the Autumn Passion variety, from May-June to August-September. The fruits are formed into small agglutinated drupes, not adhering to the receptacle *, and easily detach at maturity. The fruiting is abundant from early August to mid-October.

Raspberries are best consumed or used immediately after picking as they do not keep for very long.  Production reaches its normal level in the third year after planting. One plant can produce fruit for about 10 years. The Autumn Passion Raspberry can be planted with earlier varieties such as Malling Promise, in order to have fruit over a longer period.

The fruits can be used to make jams or fill pies. The cultivation of raspberries seems to date back to the late Middle Ages. In the forest, five to ten years after cutting down beech trees, wild raspberries appeared in the cleared areas and produced fruit for three to four years. Raspberries are not very high in energy, they contain two specific sugars, levulose and fructose, and very little sucrose. The fruits also contain ellagic acid, tannins, vitamin C, and are a good source of potassium. It is also a medicinal plant, with the young shoots and buds used in gemmotherapy.

*This non-adherence is, moreover, a distinguishing criterion between raspberries in the broad sense and blackberries (including Rubus fruticosus, our European blackberry) whose receptacle remains on the fruit.