This plant is widely sold in the western U.S. as a “boulevard” plant. It is primarily used alongside commercial buildings and in parking lot medians. C. macrocarpa is highly regarded for its resilience in areas of foot traffic. The fruit – even when fully ripe – is considered insipid due to a significant latex content and lack of flavor. The fruit is completely ignored by wildlife here and few if any persons eat it except on a trial basis.
Here it is at my local gas station:
I think they are fairly tasty, tart/sweet kinda dried cranberryish.
Here is mine, about 8’ high x 8’ across
I also have this one with small fruit, seven petaled flowers and mostly single bifurcated thorns.
Seven petals
Single bifurcation
I only had opportunity to taste them once. I found it nice enough to be worth growing if only it would survive where I live.
I feel like this fruit actually has potential as a good breeding program. I can only conclude that the flavor is variable, since the reports on flavor are inconsistent. Green Deane rates it highly, going as far as saying it has commercial potential. He likened it to sweet cranberry. Jared from Weird Explorer said it has a distinct berry taste with a creamy flavor, and likened it to blackberry milkshake.
I think the better ones should be sought out, propagated and bred to improve on its quality. It seems as worthwhile a candidate for improvement as any berry or garden fruit.
@Caesar
My conclusion has been: at best they are talking about a different plant, at worst they are sellers misrepresenting the inventory they obtained from Home Depot.
I’ve never had success trying to obtain a better tasting cultivar and would be happy to pay for it – including shipping and phytosanitary costs.
I used to eat them occasionally in Miami, where they are popular landscape/hedge plantings for waterfront areas since they can handle salt spray. If they are 100% ripe they can be palatable or even ok tasting, but even for the best tasting ones I find the latex unpleasant. Leaves your tongue feeling sticky. I’ve never had a low latex specimen, but that should be the breeding goal if anyone finds it worth the effort.
@Richard The former is a forager, the latter a professional contortionist, so I don’t think they have any stakes in the commercial sector. That might leave an incorrect ID… I’ll post Deane’s video.
I wonder if the other Carissa have low latex fruit. C. bispinosa is consistently highly rated, but it’s a smaller fruit. One has size, one has flavor, crossbreeding seems the best route! Though that’s my answer to everything. When all you have is a hammer… 
Somebody with 94 videos is in it for the YouTube revenue.
I got seeds. I placed an order at Trade Winds Fruit for Sweet Granadilla (Passiflora ligularis), African Peach (Nauclea latifolia), and Phalsa (Grewia asiatica), and when I saw they had Natal Plum seeds for relatively cheap, I decided to go for them. I don’t have very high expectations, but I’d like to experience it for myself.
How long from germination to fruit?
They sprouted about a month ago. I’ve been meaning to up-pot them, but my current soil supply is limited, and I’m still awaiting the arrival of some Rubus.
I foraged for this fruit in California and found it quite tasty- and I am surprised by the lack of discussion of it on this forum. When I searched online, Ive seen discussion of growing it as a bonsai and even bringing it indoors. As someone in 7a, I cannot grow this in ground but potentially could bring it in when temperatures drop.
Is there anyone who has experience growing it for fruit in pots and overwintering inside?
there should really be a psa campaign to let the public know that this common landscaping plant in milder climates produces edible fruit that can sometimes be quite tasty.
in the san diego area, specifically the miramar reservoir, i found a variety with fruit large enough that it was worth it for me to sow the seeds. and now i have several seedlings a few inches tall. if anyone happens to be near that area, here’s the exact location (just to the left of the truck). finding it was a decent consolation prize for completely failing to find any wild figs in the area. i was specifically searching for male figs.
a while back i grafted variegated natal plum scions onto my partner’s regular variety in her front yard. i didn’t tell her of course. a few months passed and 3 out of the 4 scions established and i removed the tape. a few more months passed after that and finally she noticed one. she said that when she spotted it she was excited for 2 seconds before correctly concluding that it wasn’t a natural mutation and that i was responsible. she remembered that i had pulled a similar prank a couple years earlier by grafting a variegated ficus elastica onto her regular green variety.
not sure if kartuz nursery still sells small starts of the variegated natal plum. quite a few years back i bought a carissa edulis var tomentosa from kartuz and it flowered and fruited. the fruit was much smaller and darker than macrocarpa but tasted pretty decent. i neglected it for too long but last year finally planted it in the ground next to a variegated macrocarpa and a seedling of the reservoir variety so that they will hopefully be naturally cross-pollinated.
This is a synonym of Carissa spinarum, also known as Conkerberry.
Natal plum makes a great houseplant as well. I’ve had one growing in a medium sized pot for a dozen or so years. I was on a walk on Useppa Island in Florida and noticed one fruiting along the path. I liked the fruit and saved the seeds. Have been growing it in a pot here in Indiana ever since. In the house during winter and on the back porch during summer. Even fruits from time to time. Very easy to keep pruned at around a foot tall.
