A bit of -yung- leaf morphology
Hops growing rampant on brambles, I really like these kinds of entanglements.
At first sight, one could mistake one plant for the other, as leaves show immediate similarities. But looked closer, here are some differences and shared characteristics you can easily spot:
Shape:
A hop leaf is usually palamtely 3-lobed. It means that a single leaf contains three divisions in the shape of a palm (think of a duck palm or your hand), spreading from its base. You can see it easily on the picture: One leaf with three lobes.
Blackberry leaves are compound leaves: They often occur in a composition of three leaflets, but it is not a leaf with three parts. It means that these are three different singular leaves, that are displayed or arranged together by three. You get it?
Margins:
Both hops and blackberry leaves margins have these small irregularities, called serrations: like tooths of a saw.
Serrate leaves are also a characteristic shared by most plants from the rose family (Rosaceae), which Blackberry is from (not hops. By the way hops comes from hemp family (Canabecaeae), same as marijuana, that's why it smells the same, try to crush a leaf or the cone when it's season). Back to rose family: Next time you see an apple tree, plum tree, or strawberry plant, have a closer look at how the leaves look like: you will see the resemblance and witness the family connexion between the plants.
Veins:
These are the thin lines you see meandering on the leaf. They are transporting water and nutrients through the plant.
In both hops and blackberry leaves, you'll observe a pattern of a central axis with a bigger vein, from which secondary veins are growing both sides. It looks like a feather, and it's called pinnate veins (btw pinnation is an arrangement that occurs in other natural contexts).
#humuluslupulus #hops #rubus #blackberry
This is much more approachable. I should follow some tags...