Peruvian Groundcherry

The fruit is eaten fresh and is used for jam making.

The ‘cape gooseberry’ is both cultivated and found as an escape up to c. 1830 m. The yellow berries are edible and can be used for making jams etc.

Herbs perennial, 45-90 cm tall. Stems erect, sparingly branched, densely pubescent. Petiole 2-5 cm; leaf blade broadly ovate to cordate, 6-15 × 4-10 cm, densely pubescent, base cordate, margin entire or with a few indistinct teeth, apex short acuminate. Pedicel ca. 1.5 cm. Calyx broadly campanulate, 7-9 mm. Corolla yellow, spotted in throat, 1.2-1.5 × 1.2-2 cm. Filaments and anthers blue-purple; anthers 3-4 mm long. Fruiting calyx green, ovoid, with 5-10 weak angles, 2.5-4 cm, pubescent. Berry yellow, 1-1.5 cm in diam. Seeds yellow, ca. 2 mm in diam. Fl. summer, fr. autumn.

Plant 30-60 cm tall, pubescent-villous, often densely so. Leaves 4.5-14 x 3.5-10.5 cm, ovate to ovate-cordate, sinuate to repand or toothed, pubescent-vinous. Calyx 7-9 mm long, ± campanulate, 1/2-cleft, 35-40 mm long and inflated in fruit; lobes triangular-acuminate. Corolla yellow, purple blotched, sparse pubescent without; lobes shortly ciliate. Anthers 2.3-3 mm long, narrow oblong; filaments 3-4 mm long, glabrous. Berry 13 mm broad. globose, orange. Seeds 2.4 mm long, subreniform, minutely reticulate, brown.

Tropical S. America, cultivated elsewhere and naturalised.

Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Yunnan [native to South America, widely naturalized elsewhere]

Distribution: Tropical America, cultivated or naturalised elsewhere.

900-2200 m

Fl. Per.: May-October.

Near roads, river valleys, cultivated and naturalized; 1200-2100 m.