Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [nafex] E. Pungens Edibility/ bearing/ seed size

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Elizabeth Hilborn <ehilborn@mebtel.net>
  • To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] E. Pungens Edibility/ bearing/ seed size
  • Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:35:59 -0500

Alexis,
There is a lot of fruit on the bushes I see in town where it is zone 8. They seem to have set heavily during the last 3 years, the only period I have noticed them. Maybe there are differences among varieties. I can collect fruit from these heavily bearing bushes if you want some seeds to play with.

A feature of Silverberry that no one has mentioned so far is the large seed. Especially when compared to goumi, there seems to be less flesh and more seed per fruit.

They are coming ripe here now and I am having to chase off squirrels to get some fruit.

Betsy Hilborn

On 2/22/2012 8:16 PM, alexis@conev.org wrote:
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








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page