Exotic Solanums

Are you going to dab some pollen and try?

No, I pulled out all of my C. abutiloides. Besides tasting awful, the fact that it grew rapidly without much summer irrigation, loved the heat of a Sacramento Valley summer, and had a tendency to sprout everywhere from seed pooped out by birds made me feel that the potential for invasiveness was too high to keep it around.

2 Likes

That’s the first report I’ve come across of it tasting bad. I bought seed from Baker Creek this year and have/had high hopes. In the few videos I watched reviewing the fruit quality, people’s reactions seemed to range from ‘good’ to ‘really good’. How many did you grow and did you see much variation among them? How would you describe the flavor? The skin of my tamarillos isn’t very tasty, and so I could imagine that because you eat abutiloides whole, the skin might impart some bitterness.

I had two plants and could not detect any meaningful differences between them. All parts of the plant, including the ripe fruit, have a really strong smell. Similar to that of tamarillos when you brush against the leaves, but stronger and sticks to your hands. I don’t find the smell too objectionable, but it’s not really something I find appetizing. I really wanted to like the fruit, so I tried them at all stages of ripeness and eating them with and without the skin, neither of which made much of a difference. The initial flavor isn’t bad, kind of tropical with a good amount of sweetness, but it quickly veers into intense bitterness. There’s also the “solanaceous” flavor, for lack of a better word, that you find in fresh goji berries and underripe cape gooseberries that lingers with the bitterness.

I’m not typically bothered by bitterness. I grow and eat bitter melons and Solanum torvum. But the smell and bitterness of C. abutiloides fruit coupled with its invasive potential and low yield relative to the size of the plant just didn’t do it for me.

I imagine there’s a lot of genetic diversity in the species, and with some selection, better tasting individuals can be found.

3 Likes

Thanks for the details. I know the Solanaceous ‘flavor’ you’re describing. It almost blurs the line of taste and sensation really, IMO. I’ve noted it as a prominent feature of the native/endemic Physalis that I grow and enjoy.

What was your seed source?

Baker Creek