Excerpt from
VANCOUVER MATTERS*
Blackberry Rubus ursinus
Blackberry is simultaneously a specific living material and ecological situation. The surfacing of Rubus ursinus in Vancouver signals a complex and layered account of people, birds, animals, weather conditions and economics. Blackberry vines are one of the first plants to appear when soil is left uncultivated or is exposed by clearing. Left alone, they form thick evergreen mats along the edges of fields, streams, power lines, railways, parkland and highways. In dense urban areas, they may find space in cracked pavements, along fence lines or in untended gardens and back lanes. Their strong, barbed canes will grow to reach several metres long, arching over fences, walls and small buildings. This biological situation is not always included in our pictures of Vancouver or in the highly varnished and calculated surface of the planned city. It is however, an irrepressible part of the organic city.
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* Excerpt from Vancouver Matters (Vancouver, BC : Blue Imprint, 2008)