Long time forum lurker here, thought I could contribute my experience with this fruit tree which is little mentioned and has scant information available about it. This tree is probably meant to be grown in the ground in zone 10+, this is about my experience growing it in a pot in zone 6a.
About my setup: I’ve been growing this plant since early 2020. I bought it from Logees, being sold as a Strawberry Tree. It arrived as a very small potted plant, but was healthy looking and green. This is one of those plants with a real identity crisis. No one seems to know what to call it, it really needs it’s own name. It’s not a cherry or a strawberry. I suppose the flowers and leaves kind of resemble those of a strawberry, but anyone expecting this to have fruit that tastes like a strawberry is going to be disappointed. Anyway, I’ve been growing plants outside and gardening for several years before growing this, but at the time had little experience with potted plants, and even now I think I am at best moderately skilled at growing potted plants which require over-wintering. I probably have made mistakes growing it, especially early on. It is moved outside in the warmer weather, and brought inside in the cold. Outside the only available location for me to put it at this time is between 2 homes in a small town. This area is not getting as much sun as I would like. Inside I have LED grow lights for it, where it is kind of crowded together with some other plants I have. The first year I had it I did not have any kind of humidifier and the inside humidity at some points in winter was quite low, in the teens. Since then I got a cool mist and have been able to keep the humidity usually around 50. In the winter I give it a very small amount of monthly fertilizer. In the summer I give it more. I have slowly potted it up from 1 gallon to 2 gallons pots, and this last year into a 5 gallon cloth pot.
(The plant in it’s first year)
(The plant in it’s second summer)
(Later that year)
Growing Observations:
The leaves of this plant are interesting. In the day they stand out erect and at night they go limp. The fruit likes to hides under the leaves and I usually find that there is more fruit than I thought. This plant sheds leaves a lot. In the winter my floor is covered with them around the pot.
The plant grows very fast. It went from very small to about 9 ft tall in 3 years, in a pot. And that’s with it being unhappy half the time. It has gotten so big that it looks kind of ridiculous with a thick trunk coming out of a 5 gallon pot. In the summer when it’s windy the pot commonly gets tipped over.
(Looking good at the end of last summer)
(Probably too big for it’s pot)
This plant is very thirsty. I need to water it probably 4 times a week. It dries out faster than all my other potted plants.
I find this plant to be somewhat difficult, in that indoors it always looks unhappy. Leafs fall all the time and branches shrivel up. It still tries to keep going though. The first winter I kind of doubted it would survive to go back outside, and when it finally did it had no leafs left. It recovered rapidly once outside and looked great by July. Since getting a humidifier it does slightly better inside, but still looks rather haggard by spring. I have occasional bouts with spider mites indoors, and usually have to spray for them once every month or so. One year I had mealy bugs, but they seemed to ignore this tree.
(Plant in recovery)
The plant flowers a lot. The flowers are small and white, and actually do look like strawberry flowers. I first got a few flowers after growing the plant about a year. It seems like it has lots of flowers in spring and fall, but even in winter it will sometimes put out a few flowers. For most of the growing season outside there will be fruit of various stages of ripeness on the tree. I get a good amount of fruit for the size of the tree. I’ve even successfully ripened a few fruits in the house in winter. But generally I only get a few fruits at a time. I’ve stored them on the counter for maybe up to a week before they go bad. So to get enough fruit at a time to get more than a small taste is challenging.
(Flower in full bloom)
(Various fruits and flowers)
The Fruit:
The fruits are small red berries about the size of a medium blueberry. Like a blueberry there are tiny seeds throughout the fruit, but they are so small you don’t notice them at all. I’ve seen the flavor described as cotton candy. I think that’s quite a stretch personally. It’s not nearly as sweet as that would suggest. It does have a unique and interesting flavor that could be described as mildly sweet and maybe if you try real hard to taste it has a vaguely cotton candy like quality. Some fruits have been sweeter than others and the sweetest were pleasant, but most have not been very sweet but still have a very unique and interesting flavor I felt would be good processed in some way if I could get enough fruit at one time to make anything with it. To me the fruit has a couple problems. The skin is kind of thick and has an unpleasant bitterness or sometimes grassy taste to it which kind of ruins the fresh eating experience to some degree. I’ve found that it’s possible and only slightly tedious to peel the skin off the fruit. This is very time consuming to do on many small fruits though. My other complaint is the end of the fruit where the petals of the flower once were becomes a hard bump on the bottom of the fruit. If you don’t peel it off before eating it is tough and has even more bitterness than the skin. I think that the flavor of this fruit could vary a lot though. Consider that it does not seem to have any cultivars, so the fruit flavor could be dependent on the genetics of the particular tree. Also my plant in a pot may taste different than the same one in a better environment.
(a nice ripe fruit, unfortunately blurry photo)
(Several hanging fruits)
(So many fruits)
So, after growing this for 3 years I was kind of iffy about this tree. I decided to try to make something from the fruit. To do this I collected berries over about a 3 month period late last year. It was actually a smaller harvest than the previous year, but I blame the strange weather we were having here. (few of my plants had great harvests last year) As I harvested the fruit I would peel each berry and put it in a freezer bag in the freezer. This slowly added up to enough pulp to make a very small batch of jam, about enough for 2 pieces of toast. But the jam was outstanding. It took on a slightly different flavor and to me it tasted vaguely like banana with cinnamon. My wife thought she detected an apple note also. Everyone who tasted it thought it was delicious. So now I like this tree a bit more and am glad I have it.
(my experimental jam)