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Post by raphanus on Oct 30, 2022 7:48:53 GMT -5
Have you tried these? I got a few seeds from a friend who got them from Baker Creek years ago. The seeds are really tiny, like a tomatillo seed. Birds get a lot of the fruit, but I get some. I’ve tried to keep them as perennials and overwinter them in my greenhouse, but they usually die if it gets below about 35 and my greenhouse is unheated, so some years it does get that cold in there. I reliably get a couple volunteers each year that pop up in random places from birds eating the fruits. The foliage has a very very strong and distinctive smell that bothers some people, but makes the seedlings really easy to identify if there’s any question. The leaves are soft and a little fuzzy, which is unlike most other cultivated nightshades. The fruits have such a unique taste, they are very sweet but also a little bitter with some floral notes. They kinda have the texture of a large blueberry but the skin is just slightly fuzzy like a peach. They can grow from a seed to an 8 foot tall plant in a single summer. They don’t like temperatures above about 85 and need lots of water and some shade to survive the summers in the deep south. Surprisingly for a high altitude plant, they seem to grow fine at sea level and I haven’t had any issues with diseases. They are a magnet for hornworms though. The fruits cannot be eaten until they are fully ripe and dark orange.
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Post by gardendmpls on Oct 30, 2022 9:12:36 GMT -5
This is a dwarf tamarillo from South America. Grows 6-10 feet tall. Wonder how big the non-dwarfs grow. The whole tree is poisonous and the unripe fruit, but the fruits are good when ripe. The fruits skin and seeds are bitter, but the rest is fruity, tropical with hints of pineapple. Supposed to be good in smoothies. Tradewinds fruit carries the seed and says they do well in containers and tolerate some shade. Maybe you can bring them in over the winter if they aren't too tall.
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Post by raphanus on Oct 30, 2022 11:59:22 GMT -5
I hope someone comes up with a good common name for it. Solanum is such a gigantic genus that includes everything from tomato to potato to eggplant to this plant. Tamarillos are in the Solanum genus but they are their own species, very different from this one, and their fruits are much more similar to cherry tomatoes. Tamarillos used to be called tree tomatoes, which I think was a sensible name since they are trees and their fruits look kinda like cherry tomatoes. But this plant is not very similar to tomatoes or tamarillos, so it will hopefully get its own name at some point. I’m mostly curious if anyone else grows this and has saved seeds. I’ve always counted on volunteers to pop up in the spring, but would actually like to try to save some seeds this fall, they are just sooo tiny. I gave some fruits to a coworker yesterday and he thought they tasted gross. I really like them. I have another coworker who loves the fruits but can’t stand the smell of the foliage.
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Post by Mumsey on Oct 30, 2022 17:05:34 GMT -5
raphanus, Never even heard of it!! And probably won't pursue it!!
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Post by claude on Nov 1, 2022 9:38:27 GMT -5
For some reason I thought of aunt mollys ground cherries? Go figure.
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Post by raphanus on Nov 1, 2022 17:43:40 GMT -5
For some reason I thought of aunt mollys ground cherries? Go figure. Makes sense. They are both nightshades, they are both uncommon in the US, and they both taste amazing but almost no one eats them. I wish I could grow ground cherries, but they don’t seem to do well with humidity in the deep south. I grew them once years ago in the desert in California and they did amazing. I don’t think they will reliably set fruit where I live now. Tomatillos rarely do well here for the same reason, humidity messes up the pollen and reduces fruit set, and tomatillos and ground cherries are closely related.
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Post by gardendmpls on Nov 1, 2022 17:53:25 GMT -5
hope someone comes up with a good common name for it. Tamarillos are in the Solanum genus but they are their own species, very different from this one Yes, they are a different species, but the name common name for Solanum abutiloides is dwarf tamarillo which comes from it having some similarities to the real tamarillo, as stated below: "Solanum abutiloides is a species of plant in the family Solanaceae. It is endemic to Argentina and Bolivia, and thrives as a weedy plant in rocky land, on stream banks, and scrub land between 900–3,600 metres (3,000–11,800 ft) in elevation. It is also known as dwarf tamarillo, due to superficial similarities with Solanum betaceum. Both plants are noted for very rapid growth from seed, and very strongly fragrant foliage. Solanum abutiloides is also sometimes known by the archaic Cyphomandra sibundoyensis." Wikipedia
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Post by breezygardener on Nov 1, 2022 17:57:08 GMT -5
I tend to avoid fruits/vegetables that might kill me if I harvest them at the wrong time - lol!
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Post by raphanus on Nov 2, 2022 6:11:10 GMT -5
I think rather than try to extract the tiny seeds from these small fruits, I’m just going to dehydrate a few whole fruits, get them as dry as possible, and plant a few in the spring and thin out the multiple seedlings that will probably come up.
I really enjoy the taste of these enough to grow them every year. And the plants are pretty enough to double as ornamentals. It’s pretty easy to know when to harvest the fruits. Green = don’t eat, orange = eat. Just like how we don’t eat potatoes if they have green on them.
There’s a lot of really bad common names out there. We don’t call potatoes “ground tomatoes” or call eggplants “giant purple tomatoes” just because the plants happen to all be in the same genus and have a handful of superficial similarities. That might make a little more sense for species in very small genera, but Solanum is a massive genus. I still occasionally have to explain to people that yams and sweet potatoes aren’t even closely related, much less the same thing. Fortunately, there are academic committees that occasionally update both scientific and common names as needed, but they tend to focus more on economically important crops, which S. abutiloides is unfortunately not. The award for the worst common name, which I won’t repeat, goes to our native edible root forming sunflower. I’ve had to correct the Wikipedia article on Helianthus tuberosus probably half a dozen times at this point because whoever runs Wikipedia can’t seem to wrap their mind around the concept that a sunflower that is native to North America should not be referred to as a Mediterranean thistle/cardoon 🤦♂️
Anyway, I like rare plants and I just wanted to share the photo of this one from my garden, it was a volunteer that I rescued from my old garden months after I had moved, went back to pick up some furniture and almost stepped on it so I dug it up and transplanted it to the orchard. Was mostly just curious if anyone had tried to save seeds. It’s like trying to save seeds from a blueberry, they are so tiny. Maybe I’ll start calling this plant “tropical orange blueberry” 🤷♂️. There’s a cool plant I’ve grown some years called Hibiscus sabdariffa , that some old timers refer to as “southern swamp cranberry” since the fruits are dark burgundy and can be made into a drink that tastes very similar to cranberry juice. I’m a little more lenient on that unfortunate common name because of the culinary substitution similarity, and it’s obvious when looking at the plant that it is an okra/cotton relative, not a cranberry plant so no possibility of confusion there 😂
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