Yeah, my first year same thing happened. The black took a few extra weeks (3 or 4), It's 2nd year it's come out pretty close to the other caneberries.

Will cultivated raspberries whose seed has been spread by birds be true to the parent plant or do they revert back to a species? Could they be a raspberry/black cap cross? ==>>> genetics rules are the same everywhere... they are a genetic combination of the respective parents... to avoid such.. you would propagate it other ways... but hwat i dont understand.. is why you throw in the word species... the cultivated raspberry are cultivars.. NOT SPECIES.... over the billions of seedlings.. i suppose you could get a throwback to the species.. but before i contemplate my navel any further.. did you mean species.. or did you mean revert back to the previous cultivar .... ken ps: one of the definitions on species.. is that it comes true from seed.. so how could your wild seed machinations.. throw back to a species... ok.. i am now confusing myself.. lol ...

I have watched the 'black cardinal' from the beginning post, and it is a cardinal, no longer black though, but still very dark brown, yes there is a red tint to all the feathers, I'm inclined to think it's a male too. He is a loner, never comes to the feeders with a group like most do. He is aggressive and runs the other cardinals off, no matter how red they are. Most of the time he just waits till the other cardinals are gone. he will feed with all the other birds as long as they don't get to close. I have a video where you see a female cardinal come and land on the cast iron post the feeder is on, while the dark cardinal was at the feeder, and it did get mean with the female, repeatably flying up at her till she left. The beautiful female with the brown to tan, beside the the dark cardinal his brown looks black compared to her. I've not seen him near a juvenile male yet. He's a beautiful bird, at any rate. I have been trying to take the video and get some snapshots from it, my Kodak is not like my Flip video, my Flip has software built in for doing anything, including snapshots. Here's a picture from a set a few days ago, not good quality, and in the shade, I'll try and send the other three or four. the only way I have to tell him from any other, is that the dark color shows him up, even if he is flying across the yard to the feeder.

Yes, if your intention is to increase the number of canes, do not cut in the center but rather leave a short piece at the newly rooted end as mentioned above. Then next year's energy will go into a new cane rather than fruiting on the old one. Leave enough cane to serve as a good marker amongst the weeds.