So I got a boysenberry plant two years ago. It was labeled as “thornless” which was easy to verify by eye. But as soon as I planted it, I also got shoots that were extremely thorny. I’ve been trimming these off each time I find them, but they keep coming back. Are the thorny ones coming from the same root stock? Am I doomed to have these shoots forever? Or is this coming from a separate rootstock intermingled with the thornless? In that case, the thorny will eventually die from lack of growth if I keep up on the pruning.
Since the hybrid thornless comes from several varieties of berry,,chances are they will continue ! Did you notice when you bought it if it was a grafted plant or a hybrid ?
You know, I didn’t notice, but I bet that’s what happened. They grafted weaker thornless boysenberry on to hardier thorny rootstock. That probably means I’ll never be rid of it without digging up the whole trot network.
