ASHLAND, Ore. -- In the battle between humans and blackberry bushes, the humans can hope for just the reprieves offered by the likes of Rush Dixon of Ashland.

He's developed a gizmo that combines teeth and a rake, attached to a front-end loader, that digs up blackberries by their roots. He says it will clear a patch 2,000 feet square in 10 minutes.

It's been called a blackberry annihilator, but that's a stretch. Dixon said the machine will just knock the bushes back for three to four years.

The Himalayan blackberry that grows widely in the Northwest is actually a western European import, experts say, probably brought in the late 19th century for the berries.

By the mid-20th century, it had made a home in the Northwest and fiercely resists attempts to uproot it.

"The temperature and growing conditions here are ideal, even with no supplemental water in the summer," said Marsha Waite, coordinator for Jackson County Master Gardeners. "Birds and raccoons like them as much as people, so they get dispersed all over the place. Even if a tip of a vine gets into the soil, a new plant emerges."

Dixon's machine went to work on Keith Corp's ranch by Emigrant Lake south of Ashland.

"The advantage Russ's machine has is the teeth on the rake," said Corp. "I had to do a little spot sprayingafterward. But yeah, I don't think anything will come up for a few years."

Corp said he's heard people talk of digging up blackberries by hand, and has to laugh.

"Oregon has a very special variety of blackberries," he said. "They're carnivorous: You put your hand in the vines and you come out with a bloody stump."