The fragrant thimbleberry or purple-flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus Linnaeus) is a low shrub ranging from Nova Scotia across to southern Ontario and south into northern Alabama and Georgia. It is unlike most of the other 250 species of brambles.

Most brambles grow in full sun; the fragrant thimbleberry grows at the edges of moist, shady woodlands. Brambles generally have three to five leaflets, this raspberry's large leaves are lobed like those of a maple or sweetgum. Neltje Blanchan (Wild Flowers, 1900) wrote that the lower leaves, measuring up to 12 inches, were folded into drinking cups.

The shrub is covered with bristly gland-tipped trichomes (plant hairs), but no prickles. And instead of white flowers in spring and fruit in summer; the fragrant thimbleberry blooms from June to September and bears fruit from July to early autumn.

The fragrant thimbleberry's most remarkable attribute are the large, fragrant, magenta flowers borne in clusters of 5 to 75. The five-petalled flowers fade to pale pink before falling. The fruit is red, hemispherical, and, according to Gray's Manual of Botany, "dryish and rather insipid". But wild birds love thimbleberries and the plant is highly rated to attract songbirds to the garden.

(Compiled from: Gray's Manual of Botany, Merritt Lyndon Fernald, Dioscorides Press, 1950, reprinted 1989; "Rubus odoratus", Kemper Center for Home Gardening, Missouri Botanical Garden and Wild Flowers. An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and their Insect Visitors, Neltje Blanchan, 1900, published on the internet by Project Gutenberg.)