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Post by orflo on Feb 9, 2011 13:26:16 GMT -5
I wondered, has anyone ever grown this, it's a relative of mulberry, and of course of osage orange, maclura pomifera (it can even hybridise with it)? I intend to buy some plants of these, but I want to make sure the berries are quite nice to eat (according to what I've read they should be a bit overripe).
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Post by castanea on Feb 9, 2011 21:50:52 GMT -5
I have grown them for many years. The fruit is best described as insipid. Most birds won't eat the fruit. I won't eat the fruit. Many people say they taste OK the first few times they eat them, but they usually stop eating them pretty quickly, and they can never explain why. I hate to sound mystical, but there is just something wrong with this fruit. Osage orange is clearly not edible by humans, or most anything else, and in my opinion neither is che fruit, or at least not palatable.
The fruit is sometimes listed as a famine food, as are the leaves. Personally I would rather eat the leaves. The tree is a tough tree though, handling heat, cold and drought, and makes a very pretty ornamental. I like the tree, but just do not consider the fruit to be palatable. Young seedlings and root suckers on older plants can have nasty thorns.
The Chinese use the leaves for feeding silkworms. The fruit is occasionally (rarely?) eaten in China but many do not consider it edible. There is no widespread history of people eating it there or in Europe when it was introduced in the 1800s. In China they have developed many derogatory terms for the fruit.
The people who like che fruit the best are the people who don't have a tree or haven't had it for very long. People who have had the trees for many years often feel the same way I do.
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