I tasted one that was underripe. It did taste like warm runny watermelon slime inside a fig-raspberry textured package. And like figs, the stem scar leaked a drop of latex sap due to the underripeness. I wish I could try a fully developed one dead-ripe to see if there’s any improvement. I could see myself snacking on these, but am not sure if they’ll be successful at my mountain property’s 1600 foot above sea level elevation. And I’m not sure they’re worth the limited space.
I have some osage orange whips I grew from local seed finally getting bigger. I might graft this year, if I have the time and energy, but not a high priority.
am tempted to grow one or two myself…
while also worried about our elevation, more worried about our oven-hot summers. Have been searching online for anybody posting weblogs about growing it in vegas, but so far none.
I finally ate my first Che fruit, and… mehhh. Nothing all that special. It may have been a little under ripe, so I think I’ll give the tree one more year, but I’m not expecting too much. The flavor was okay, kind of raspberry and watermelon-like, but there’s just not a whole lot to it.
I had more or less the same experience and reaction as SMC, which is to say I had my first taste this year and they were very minimally appealing. I did pick up on the watermelon flavor. I think if I were walking by a tree loaded in ripe fruit I might eat one or two but no more, and I probably wouldn’t go more than two or three steps out of my way. I don’t think there’s anything really bad about the taste; they’re just very, very minimally good. However, I’ll add that it’s a very pretty little tree, even late in the year when a lot of other trees don’t look as nice, and I think it will be even more ornamental as my tree matures further and sets more fruit. It’s really one of the prettiest, if not the prettiest edible ornamental I’ve planted, apparently without even minor pest or disease issues. But if I didn’t care about the novelty or the ornamental value at all (i.e. if I only cared about eating the fruit) and if I didn’t already have one and if I had unlimited space and if someone had given me a free tree to plant, I might or might not go to the trouble of planting it. Mine is about 10’ tall now and maybe close to that in diameter/spread, and this is the first year it didn’t abort all its fruit. It probably matured around 100 fruits this year.
Matt,
My Che grafts failed over several months due to incompatability. I’m not giving up yet just going to try some different tricks. Wild Osage orange is like wild callery pear each and everyone is genetically unique and at times painfully tricky to work with. These experiments may help you Che, mulberry, osage orange, fig grafting
you know, @castanea – i couldn’t help but click the ‘like’ button even though totally aware it is a fruit tree you don’t like and advising everybody not to have
perhaps it is not good-eating, but the fruit and the tree sure looks pretty!
It is a surprisingly tough tree and I respect that. It handles heat and drought very well. It is a nice ornamental as long as you don’t need to clean up the fruit. But you do not want it on its own roots because the older it gets the more sprouts it will throw up and all of those sprouts have nasty thorns…
This is only the first year my tree fruited, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a more mature tree would ripen its fruit over a somewhat longer season, but it seems like my tree started ripening fruit sometime around the beginning or middle of September and continued until just the last few days.
3rd year In ground seedless from EL. Got a pretty decent harvest this year, though most never made it to the house. I am wondering if this is one of those fruits that is very sensitive to growing conditions, cause I don’t recognize the flavorless bland etc fruit being described here. Mine are sweet, melony and delicious.
