[Sago48]

I took on an allotment 2 years back and after clearing a lot of brambles found a lot of fruit including what I thought were raspberries, growing up a frame with uprights and horizontal wires. I cut them down to near the ground and last year they grew long dark red/brown shoots  - 2 to 3 metres - with no flowers and no fruit.

I left them and this year they are flowering and fruiting now - fruit looking very much like raspberries. But they aren't bushy and don't look much like any pics of raspberry bushes I've seen so far. Some of the shoots are very long, curving over and down, with no leaves or flowers on the final metre or so of shoot. It looks to me as though these shoots will put down roots in the soil if I leave them.

My question is are they likely to be raspberries, or something related, and how to treat them.

Thanks

[New shoot]

Hard to tell exactly what they are without a picture, but there quite a few other berries that also get grown on posts and wires.

Try googling pictures of tayberries, loganberries or Japanese Wineberries.  Most are treated the same as summer raspberries i.e. you cut out the old fruited canes and tie in the new canes for the following year 

[Trikidiki]

Do they have spines, thorns or smooth bark?

If the plot has been neglected for some time and you have brambles growing they could be a hybrid.

Raspberries tend to be upright in habit but may bend under the weight of fruit. Other briar fruits like loganberries and blackberries produce the arching habit you describe.

[mdjlucan]

Maybe they are loganberries

[AnnieB]

If they are long enough to grow a cane and touch down there is a fair chance they are either a Blackberry, Tayberry or Loganberry. Any of these can have fairly significant thorns on them.

In sort of general raspberry's are short enough and stiff enough to not bend over to make contact with the ground. In my general experience anyway, whereas the other 3 mentioned I have found will grow long enought to make contact with the ground. As you say they will root and form another plant.

You will have to leave them to flower and produce fruit in order to find out, and even then Tayberry and Loganberry are reasonably similar. Blackberry and Raspberry are easy to identify.

[mumofstig]

There's also Boysenberry to throw in the mix 

[sunshineband]

So really what we mean is could we have a photo please?

The fruit might help you when it is ripe too 😊

[Sago48]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. They are smooth with no thorns.

I've been away but will be on my plot today and will take some pics and send them. The seem to be fruiting OK so whatever they might be they'll be a treat in a few weeks time.

Thanks again