The fruit is physically similar to a thin skinned plum. The taste is “wow”. Many different flavors hit your mouth at once.
One of the several male and female Kei Apple plants I noticed at the San Diego Zoo today.
Today I spent an hour tending to my Kei Apple espalier – tying up new lateral growth along the trellis and removing about 40 gallons worth of unwanted branches.
Looks great
Taming the wild beast
First fruit of the season … average diameter 1.5 inches.
Tomato?
Thorns? I would think there would be something more accurate to describe the railroad nails on that tree.
What zones do these things grow in?
One of the hardier subtropicals – it should grow anywhere citrus can grow, I would imagine. (But not in snowy, icy regions.) Certainly it has never shown the slightest damage in my Northern California garden, even during the worst freezes. (However, in my location 26F is a reasonably severe freeze.)
I have heard the taste described as “weird apricot” and, based on the fruit I have eaten, I would say that is about right! They probably would not appeal to all tastes. (Having said that, as far as I can tell this is mostly a wild-form fruit – if anyone bothered to breed it for better fruit quality, there would most likely be a good potential for improvement . There are clonal selections available in Southern California.)
For those in the S.F. Bay Area, there is an abundantly-producing thicket of kei apples on the rare fruit peninsula at Quarry Lakes Park in Fremont. (I have been told that it is fine to sample fruit there so long as the fruit is ripe and abundant.) It is a bit of a walk from the parking lot to the rare fruit collection, but it is worth the trip!
Richard, I feel pretty confident that those are the most tightly-controlled kei apple plants in the history of the world…
See first post in this thread.
LOL. Even razor-wire fencing is more pleasant.
LOLROTF. I want to harvest the fruit without removing skin from my arm!
Thanks for the picture of kei apple,pretty color
Thanks for all of the pics, Richard! I have never seen this fruit before. It is beautiful!
Today’s harvest … the photo is a bit overexposed in the late afternoon light.
Today we made Kei Apple puree and marinade. We started with about a dozen fruits, then quartered them for juicing and seed removal. From that we obtained about 2 cups of extract and pulp. I poured the majority of it into an ice cube tray which will be frozen for later use. That left about 1/2 cup for marinade. To that I blended 1/2 cup of Avocado Oil and 1 teaspoon of salt. The chicken is steeping in it now!
Kei Apple is dioecious. You need male and female plants to produce fruit. No way to tell which yours is until it flowers.