Thimbleberry is the soft, friendly cousin of blackberries and raspberries. Its stems carry no thorns, and its leaves are broad, fuzzy and shaped like a maple leaf, sometimes wider than an adult’s outspread hand. From spring into summer it opens crinkled white flowers, now and then tinged lavender, in small clusters at the branch tips. They are followed by red fruit made of many tiny beads, like a flattened raspberry.
The shrub spreads by underground stems and often forms thickets along trails, streams and forest edges. That root system makes it tough. A fire usually kills only the stems above ground, and new shoots come up from the surviving rhizomes, so thimbleberry is often among the first shrubs to fill in burns, clearcuts and other openings. Its numbers tend to peak somewhere between 5 and 20 years after a disturbance, then thin out as the forest closes in.
Many animals depend on it. American robins, Swainson’s thrushes and other birds eat the fruit and spread the seeds, and elk and deer browse the leaves and stems. Watch for it in forest openings, along roadsides and beside creeks from the lowlands up toward the subalpine.
How to identify it
An upright, thornless shrub up to about 10 feet tall. Leaves are large, soft and hairy, with 3 to 7 maple-like lobes, and can reach 8 inches across. White flowers, up to 2 inches wide, open two to ten together at the ends of the branches and are followed by red, raspberry-like fruit.
Look-alikes
Salmonberry shares the same moist woods but has bristly stems, leaves split into three leaflets, purplish red flowers and yellow to reddish fruit. Young maples can look similar from a distance, but maples grow their leaves in opposite pairs and make winged seeds rather than berries.
Habitat
Forest openings and edges, thickets, meadows and streamsides from sea level to the subalpine. It is most at home in moist forest and in recently disturbed ground such as burns, thinned stands and clearcuts.
Sightings in the forest
861 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on November 2, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →