Here is a shot of 5 different hybrid Physalis flowers, they were crossed by Wojciech of Natures Pathfinders, who is doing interesting work. These are 3/4 P. longifolia 1/4 tomatillo. The plants are almost as big as tomatillo, but they send out suckers. They’re pretty sterile, no fruit yet but still waiting on more tomatillo and longifolia to flower.
Here’s a weird one, Stardust goji (barbarum x ruthenicum) fruit gets a nipple shaped xenia effect when the fruit is pollenized by L. carolinianum. Only a small amount of fruit from this one due to sporadic early flowering of the Christmas berry, but all but 1-2 fruit have the nipple xenia. You can see the blight on the fruit as well, a chief defect of stardust goji in humid climates. I previously crossed stardust with L. chinense to resolve this issue and it’s working pretty good, but christmas berry genetics from the SE US should give next level fungi resistance, and also flea beetle resistance which the Asian Lycium do not have. I have studied xenia in passiflora as well, where I first observed it.
It looks like a Grape Soda Pop (Passiflora incarnata x edulis) F2 survived the icy winter. It will be nice to have a self fertile cold hardy 50% edulis to use as a parent. The GSP outcrosses are the most vigorous and robust hybrid passionfruit I’ve ever seen, they can beat many polyploids in leaf size and vigor. GSP not only gives extremely robust growth to hybrids but also self fertility to many of them.
