North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[alexis@conev.org]

My experience with E. Pungens is from my sister's patch in GA. She has 
dozens of plants. The fruit is quite edible, tasty, similar to other 
illeagnus in that it can be astringent, but looses that astringency when 
fully ripe. The weakness of Pungens (apart from invansiveness) is that 
they set fruit sparsely, perhaps unreliably (?) as you go further north. 
It seems like my sister's bushes are fairly reliable, but she is zone 
8B, very warm. My experience with E. Pungens is that the flavor is 
similar to autumn olive or goumi, but perhaps a bit less tart when fully 
ripe. Autumn olives are especially heavy fruiters (and VERY invasive), 
goumis set pretty heavily as well. I have never seen Pungens set as 
heavily as other illeagnus, but I do not have a lot of experience with 
it either.
Alexis