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["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

We usually buy some dried Lycium berries whenever we get to an oriental 
grocery  They are a nice snack, rather like a cross between raisins and 
dried tomatoes.  I've also soaked them in wine to add to fruit salads.  They 
supposedly are one of a number of famous health foods that are high in the 
rare element germanium.  I have read that the plants are naturalized in 
parts of Virginia, but though I can get the seeds from the dried fruits to 
sprout, I can't get them to grow.  I suspect that they like sandy 
well-drained soil, something I can't supply here.  I did buy a plant years 
ago and had it down in the shade by the creek in much better drained soil, 
where it neither grew nor died till I got the bright idea of moving it (when 
naturally it did the latter).   Lycium is supposed to make a rather thorny 
floppy bush that's good for covering a tree stump.             Donna