Organic Raspberry Paris- Rubus idaeus

The Bio 'Paris' Raspberry from Organic Farming is a recent French variety that combines many qualities. The flowering is perpetual, which means that the bush produces fruit for a long period: first in June, then again in October. The raspberries are large, with a rounded conical shape and a light red colour. They detach easily from their receptacle when picked. They are firm, sweet, and fragrant, of excellent taste quality, and keep well. It forms a beautiful upright, bushy plant that is easy to cultivate.

The Bio 'Paris' Raspberry belongs to the rose family. It is a cousin of blackberries and wild roses. The wild raspberry is native to Europe and temperate Asia, where it grows in cool climates alongside elderberry, beech, or sorb trees, especially in mountainous undergrowth but also in plains. It is a deciduous shrub with upright stems, forming a bush of about 1.50m (5ft) in all directions over time. The stems are biennial, each one dying after fruiting. It spreads from a perennial sucker stump that produces new stems armed with small, slightly prickly prickle. It has green leaves on the upper side and white-green tomentose undersides. The flowering is very attractive to bees. The small white flowers are grouped in small clusters of 10 to 12 and appear in two waves: in April-May and then in July-August. The fruits are formed by small aggregated drupes, not adhering to the receptacle, easily detached when ripe. The fruiting is abundant from mid-June to mid-October, with a slight pause in the middle of summer.

The fruits are best consumed fresh, as they do not keep for very long and should be eaten or quickly transformed into jam, for example. Production reaches its normal level in the third year after planting. One plant can produce fruit for several years, around 10 years. The Bio 'Paris' Raspberry can be combined with non-remontant varieties like 'Malling Promise' to obtain a continuous harvest throughout the summer.

The fruits can be used to make jams, ice creams, or to garnish pies. The cultivation of raspberries seems to date back to the end of the Middle Ages. In forests, five to ten years after cutting down beech trees in particular, wild raspberries appear in the cleared area and produce fruit for three to four years. Raspberries are not very energetic and 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 its young shoots and buds used in gemmotherapy.

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