My neighbor gave me this plant over the winter. It was in a pot, and he said he rooted it from his blackberries. I planted it this spring. The berries are large and black, but are basically sour. If you wait until they are almost rotten they might have a little sugar. Another odd thing, is that there are few seeds. Any blackberry I’ve ever had had tons of seeds. At this point I’d trade the poor taste for seeds 
Maybe it’s not a blackberry, but I’m stumped.
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Looks like blackberry to me
Looks like blackberries Hard to know which cultivar. It could be brambles? That is what we call wild blackberries back when I lived in the UK. I have picked some wild growing ones and they were tart
Blackberry. Try making Jam.
Fruit pictured above has the appearance of being sunscalded or damaged by fruit flies, both cases can affect flavor.
Wild fruit is not that large, typically.
The fruit sure does look like blackberries, but the leaves don’t look right to me.
I guess I should have said the leaf arrangement doesn’t look right to me. Lots of singles rather than groups of 3-5.
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While most blackberries do not require cross pollination. The lack of seeds indicates this particular one does. If being seedless effects sugar content I do not know. Maybe the plant does not sweeten seedless berries, one way to be sure is to buy any other cultivar and plant near by.
Thanks for the comments. Maybe some cross pollination would help. There are plenty of other berries nearby although not in my yard…you’d think the bees would be doing the job easily. The drupelets are fairly large, and not like blackberries I’m familar with. Maybe I over fertilized?? Anyway, I’m not too concerned about the birds, who are currently having their way with them. Not really interested in planting any more at the moment, but maybe another variety would improve things.
Unlike raspberries, blackberries are self-pollinating and having nearby alternates will not affect the crop of either blackberry type.
Your (thorny) blackberry has lost its identity unless the neighbor has more specifics.
Ok, one year later. Should I prune this blackberry? This is only the second year. Last year when I planted it, it was only 2 little canes about a foot tall. It went crazy with growth last year, and I just kept looping the new growth on the small trellis.Weather is warming, and looks like there’s some new growth just breaking. Thanks, Ed I added the pic of what it looked like a year ago.!
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Planting caneberries that close to a fence makes harvesting more difficult and reflected heat can be a problem. The arrangement is fine for this year but in the future you will find a taller trellis system to be helpful. In the case of thorny canes, the more you can keep the planting trained to a single plane and not allow a lot of growth outward (perpendicular to the axis of the stakes), the less you will have to reach through thorns to harvest and prune. Make sure all old canes are pruned completely out after the fruit on them has been picked.
Thank you. None of the canes you see have borne fruit yet, so hopefully they will this year. I appreciate the suggestions. Yea, thankfully the fence isn’t dark, and our sun angle is very high, so reflection isn’t a huge problem, but the small trellis is a problem. Will probably make a bigger one this year, and train the plant on a single plane like you mentioned. Didn’t realize the plant would grow as much as it did last year.