Wineberries are ripe along the trail

By Jim Lynch; photo by Warren Veazey

Visitors will find a wide variety of plants along the 15 miles of the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail.  One of the trail's distinctions is that it starts at the western end in pine forests at about 150’ elevation. As the trail moves east it drops down to near sea level and runs along streams, lakes, ponds and wetlands. Consequently, its plant life is widely varied.

Among the many projects of the nonprofit Friends of the DRHT is cataloguing the trail's plant life as well as wildlife for nature enthusiasts.  Our first entry: the edible wineberry. 

The wineberry goes by several names, including wine sap berry, Japanese wineberry, wine raspberry or dew berry. It is not native to the U.S. but rather is an Asian species of raspberry.  It was introduced in Europe and North American as an ornamental plant and for breeding hybrid raspberries. The plant and its edible berries is found in patches along the trail.  One of our members reports the berries “are not as sweet as a raspberry but still a nice treat.”

As a non-native plant, the wineberry is seen as an invasive shrub or "noxious weed."  But for now we  don’t see a reason to try to control or eradicate it other than cutting it back from encroaching on the trail, as we would with any other plant. ​