Interesting facts

The generic name Rubus refers to the red fruits. The epithet idaeus stems from Roman times. In his encyclopaedic book Natural History, the Roman writer Pliny mentioned the raspberry and noted that it was originally found on Mount Ida. It is not known exactly which mountain he means, since there is a mountain of this name on Crete and in Turkey. Nearly 1900 years later the French physician and founder of phytotherapy, Henri Leclerc (1870–1955) reinvented the origin of the name. In his work Les Fruits de France he claims that the epithet idaeus goes back to the nymph Ida, and he thought up the following story: Ida, daughter of the Cretan king Melissos, found the father of the gods, Jupiter, who was still very young at the time, in the mountains crying. She wanted to soothe the weeping child and plucked a raspberry for him. While she was leaning over the raspberry bush her breast caught on a thorn. Her blood dripped on to the berries, which until then had been white, and coloured them red forever.
The origin of the name raspberry is unclear. It comes from raspis + berry, possibly from raspise, a sweet rose-coloured wine. Hindberry comes from Anglo-Saxon and means ‘berry of the hind’ (the female deer). Hinds are supposed to be particularly fond of raspberry leaves.
Finds of raspberry seeds in Stone Age settlements prove that the raspberry was already known then. Monasteries in the Middle Ages were the first to cultivate the raspberry, and it was one of the first European plants to be introduced to North America.
German myths include two stories about the raspberry. A bewitched horse was supposed to become tame if a wild raspberry twig was tied around its body. And: as the raspberry ripens, so the corn ripens.
Incidentally, a modern fairy tale tells of an unusual lover of the raspberry. In the Tale of the Raspberry Fox, by Henning Buchhagen, a young fox called Ferdinand, who didn’t like meat at all, discovers a fondness for raspberries. At that time foxes were grey as mice. But the more raspberries little Ferdinand ate, the redder his fur became. Since that time foxes have always been red and like fruit.