Douglas Justice continues to share photos from his recent trip to China. He writes:

My recent trip to China seems like a bit of a dream now. A group of us toured southern Yunnan Province, primarily to observe magnolias in the wild; however, the attendant vegetation, both native and non-native, the agriculture and the landscape in general, were to me equally fascinating. I was particularly taken with the diversity of the many Rubus (bramble) species I saw. Delightful as they all were, we (at the Botanical Garden) long ago learned our lesson regarding exotic rubi. Many are extraordinarily opportunistic and potentially invasive. For example, we've been fighting the spread of Rubus simplex since its introduction here in 1982. It was innocently collected on a botanical expedition to Hubei and distributed to a number of gardens, but here, it is a potential menace and we've been careful to remove it whenever we see it.

This species, known as huang sou mei (golden lock berry) according to a Chinese speaker on staff here at UBC, is an attractive spreading shrub with distinctive leaves, and amber fruits reminiscent of Rubus spectabilis (salmon berry). The shrub photograph was taken (in a break between torrential downpours) by a roadside in the Fadou Nature Reserve in Xichou County (Wenshan Prefecture), and the basket of fruits some 250 km to the north in the market near the Stone Forest (south of Kunming). I am only sorry I did not taste them.