Willamette Raspberry

Willamette was the most widely planted raspberry cultivar in the Pacific Northwest prior to 1980, named after Oregon's Willamette Valley, a region already documented in this database as home to some of the finest berry growing conditions in the country. It was genuinely displaced as the dominant regional variety starting in the early 1980s by Meeker, also documented in this database, which offered better yield and root rot resistance. Willamette retains one real, documented practical advantage over its successor, though: it carries natural immunity to the standard strain of raspberry bushy dwarf virus, a real vulnerability that has caused documented crop problems in Meeker plantings since the 1990s, meaning Willamette still has a genuine, specific reason to be planted today despite no longer being the dominant regional choice.