Raspberries contain more vitamin C than oranges, are super high in fibre, low in calories and supply you with a good dose of folic acid.  Further to that, they are high in potassium, vitamin A and calcium. Who would have thought that you could find so much goodness in one humble berry?  It has been suggested that drinking raspberry leaf tea shortens the second stage of labour.  It's famous for its raspberry growing. In the late 1950s, raspberries were brought down from Scotland to London on a steam train known as the Raspberry Special.  They are thought to been eaten since prehistoric times, but only began to be cultivated in England and France in about the 1600s.  That's a bit more than your standard pink berries in a box at Waitrose, isn't it?  Not all at once, but raspberries can be red, purple, gold or black in colour. The gold ones are the sweetest variety, and very tasty.  Golden raspberries are super sweet and tasty (Clara Molden)  To form new species, raspberries have been crossed with other berries.  The loganberry is a cross between raspberries and blackberries; the boysenberry is a cross between red raspberries, blackberries and loganberries; the nessberry is a cross between a dewberry, raspberry and a blackberry.  It's all gone a bit meta-berry.  Not like the football scores, no. Aggregate fruits have flowers with multiple ovaries and each produces druplets around a core.  Those druplets are the delicate little bead-like pockets of goodness in each raspberry, and each one could be considered a separate fruit on its own.  In a nice way, though: an average raspberry has 100 to 120 seeds.  The loganberry is a relative of the raspberry (PhotoLibrary)  No, you wouldn't have thought it, would you. In some kinds of Christian art, the raspberry is the symbol for kindness. The red juice was thought of as the blood running through the heart, where kindness originates.  In the Philippines, if you hang a raspberry cane from the outside of your house, evil spirits are supposed to be deterred.  In Germany, too, raspberry canes would be tied to the horse's body in the belief that it would calm them down. So much power in one gentle cane!  In the past they have been used to clean the teeth, and as a cure for sore eyes.  Unlike many fruits, unripe raspberries do not ripen after they have been picked. There's no softening up in the fruit bowl for the raspberry - once it's picked, that's your lot.  • Francine Raymond: unusual berries to grow  • Bunny Guinness: how to grow your own berries  • Telegraph Gardenshop: Buy Raspberries from the Telegraph Gardenshop. 5 canes from £12.99
They're the delicious, juicy berries so beloved of gardeners, summer drinks   menus and spicing up a fruit salad, but how much do you really know about   the raspberry?