In late September, 1998, Jimmie D. Thompson, a plant enthusiast, collected two inflorescences from a vigorous bramble near the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station farm southwest of Ames, Iowa. The unusually late flowering and the atypically compound, corymbose form of the inflorescences suggested that his collection was not taken from a common North American Rubus L. A few weeks later, additional collections were made when the senior author accompanied Mr. Thompson to the site. By using the keys in Flora Europaea (Heslop-Harrison 1968) and Brambles of the British Isles (Edees & Newton 1988) and consulting European Rubus specimens held in ISC3 and excellent illustrations in the Czech national flora, Kve˚tena Ceské Republiky (Holub 1995), and the Illustrated Companion to Gleason and Cronquist’s Manual (Holmgren 1998), the senior author determined the plants to be Rubus caesius L., the European dewberry.