brambles and their relatives

I've been weeding out the brambles that had infiltrated the shrub roses around the informal pond in the meadow.  In a properly conducted garden the pond margins would never have been allowed to get into such a state, but in practice these things happen.  I can't help admiring brambles: they are such efficient colonisers.  I still remember watching with utter fascination David Attenborough's 1995 series 'The Private Life of Plants' and the time lapse photography of brambles growing.  The tips of their stems wave from side to side until they encounter the ground, then they take root.  The prickly loops are superb at wresting territory from mown grass, as they are guaranteed to make anyone cutting it swerve round them, so they advance through the season.  The Attenborough series is still available on DVD, and brambles are in episode one.  I'll leave you to search for it from the vendor of your choice.

Almost more trouble the other side of the pond, though travelling, is Rubus cockburnianus, which I planted for the sake of its white stems.  They are indeed very fine, but it is far too vigorous.  It isn't a tip rooter but sends out questing roots which periodically send up a new clump.  I have been chopping it out lump by lump, but in the places where it has gone under the rabbit fence it is impossible to dislodge.  I could resort to poison.  I don't know if I'll have the heart to get try and get rid of all of it, but I don't think it's a wise thing to have planted.  The only situation I can imagine it being manageable would be in a very large garden, making a big patch but surrounded on all side by mown grass so that any stems that moved beyond their allocated area would be chopped down regularly.  It might need to be a wide strip of grass.  More manageable with me has been Rubus thibetanus, which I bought as 'Silver Fern' but they now seem regarded as the same thing.  That provides white stems in the back garden on a daintier scale, and runs no more than required.  R. spectabilis 'Olympic Double' with its (double) large (for a rubus) bright pink flowers runs fairly enthusiastically, but the unwanted shoots are quite easy to pull up.  I still like that one.