Rubus angloserpens – Series Glandulosi
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A carpet-forming bramble of ancient woodlands, with large leaflets and small flowers which have very narrow white petals. It is distinctively armed with numerous pale yellow fine prickles and acicles. Rubus angloserpens has been recorded from scattered locations across Britain and Ireland and appears to be genuinely rare, though often abundant where it occurs. The photographs shown here were taken in a woodland at the eastern end of the Forest of Bere, in southern Hampshire.
This is a prostrate or low-growing species, which rarely exceeds 0.5 metres in height. Panicles are often poorly developed with just a few flowers in a flat-topped simply branched cluster, but it can produce more elaborately branched inflorescences. The rachis is flexuose, green or reddish coloured. This and the floral branches are densely pubescent with numerous short-stalked glands, acicles (often gland-tipped) and with several slender declining pale yellow prickles. Panicles have large trifoliate leaves similar to the those on the stems and often a broadly elliptical or narrow simple leaf at the base of the main inflorescence.
Flowers are c.1.5-2cm in diameter; petals are white (sometimes with a hint of pink in bud), narrowly elliptical, 7-10 x 3-4mm, erect to patent. Stamens are mostly shorter than the top of the styles when viewed side-on. Styles are green; carpels and receptacle hairy.
Sepals are pubescent with short-stalked glands and acicles; white-bordered; they have long, attenuated points and are patent at flowering, giving a star-like appearance to the flowers; they eventually become erect and clasp the developing fruit.
Leaves have 3-5 but usually 3 leaflets; they are dull dark green to yellowish-green above, sparsely hairy or almost glabrous, thin in texture. The terminal leaflet is 8-10cm x 5-7cm (sometimes much larger), ovate-elliptical in shape, sometimes broadly elliptical. The apex is broadly acuminate (not strongly differentiated) and the base emarginate to narrowly cordate. The margin is shallowly dentate or serrate, often uneven in outline. All the leaflets are usually convex, or at least with a tendency to curve over.
Leaflets are sparsely hairy below, shiny and slightly paler green than above.
The first-year stem is slender, nearly round, green or sometimes reddish, often distinctly white-pruinose, thinly hairy to almost glabrous. It has numerous fine, declining prickles which may be shorter or a little longer than the stem diameter, and a mixture of pricklets, acicles and stalked glands which vary in length (some of the pricklets nearly as long as the prickles); these are all a contrasting pale green to golden yellow colour. Petioles of the leaves are similar but more strongly hairy.
