Watermelon or grapes? No, it's gooseberries!

"He couldn't imagine a manor, a place of poetry and beauty, without gooseberries."

——Chekhov's "Gooseberries"

Gooseberry , a name that is very unfamiliar to Chinese people, because they cannot eat it. When I read this novel by Chekhov as a child, I could not imagine what kind of fruit it was - chestnuts with vinegar flavor, are they really not rotten?

The misnomer of the name of gooseberry

Many years later, when I came into contact with the real thing, I realized that this plant was completely unlike chestnuts in both appearance and taste. Gooseberries are spherical berries, small in size, and taste sweet and sour. The name "gooseberry" is most likely a mispronunciation of "thorny plum" .

Gooseberries are actually juicy spherical berries | auntiedogmasgardenspot.wordpress.com

Flowers are cute too | naturescene.co.uk

The scientific name of gooseberry, Ribes uva-crispa, was given by Linnaeus. The genus name comes from the name of the fruit in Arabic. The specific epithet means "curved grape", which probably combines the shape of the plant and the fruit. Its English name gooseberry is also a misunderstanding. In fact, it has nothing to do with geese. One theory is that it comes from the Middle High German word krus, which means curved, corresponding to the former genus name of gooseberry, Grossularia. Another theory is that it comes from the sound change of goods berry , but the origin is no longer traceable. In 19th-century slang, gooseberry bush (literally "gooseberry bush") refers to pubic hair, which led to the saying that babies are "born under goose bushes".

Is it a bunch like this? | welovegrowingstuff.com

How gooseberries came to the table

Gooseberries are native to Europe and are distributed in places with relatively cool climates . The ancient Roman civilization should have come into contact with this wild fruit when it expanded northwards, and Pliny the Elder's "Natural History" may have mentioned it implicitly. The warm climate in southern Europe is not suitable for the growth of gooseberries, and the earliest area to domesticate and cultivate it should be the British Isles . Today, gooseberries are very common in France, Germany and Russia. Germany is the origin of the type specimen named for it, and Russia is the country with the highest gooseberry production, but until the end of the Middle Ages, the above regions had no history of cultivating gooseberries.

Unripe gooseberries | gardensonline.com.au

European and American horticulturists have cultivated many varieties of gooseberries, including fruit trees and ornamental varieties. Wild gooseberries are purple-red when ripe , while cultivated varieties have yellow and light green fruits.

Purple varieties | wikipedia

In general, the fruit of gooseberries tastes sour, and the seeds are slightly astringent. People who appreciate it will find it sweet, but some people find it hard to swallow. In addition to eating it directly, fresh gooseberries, dried gooseberries, and jams are often used in various desserts , which are more acceptable after being seasoned with a lot of sugar and fat. Gooseberries can also be used to make wine and soft drinks , but the taste is far from the original taste.

A gooseberry pie in progress | acakebakesinbrooklyn.com

Foreign relatives of the European gooseberry

The word gooseberry is also a general term for the subgenus Ribes of the genus Ribes , which includes several species of currants whose fruits are solitary or whose plants or fruits have thorns. For example, the American gooseberry, Ribes hirtellum, is widely cultivated as a gooseberry in North America and has hybridized with the European gooseberry.

American gooseberry | wikimedia commons

American gooseberry flowers | pinterest.com

Gooseberries are introduced and cultivated in China. Due to the small number, it is difficult to see fresh fruits for sale in the market. However, there are two wild relatives of gooseberries in China. One is the Ribes burejense, which is distributed in Northeast China and North China. The fruit has prickles. This species has some common names such as "thorn pear", "thorn plum", and "vinegar plum", which I think are the origins of the word gooseberry. The other is the Ribes alpestre , which is distributed in the southwest and is also called "alpine gooseberry". The branches of this species have sharp long thorns. The Tibetan people often grow it as a hedge, which is probably good for preventing theft. The fruits of these two types of gooseberries taste good when they are ripe. Don't miss them when you are in the above-mentioned areas. It should be ripe in a week or two.

Unripe Ribes serrata, like a small lantern with thorns | xunhai.com

Ribes longicorn | efloras.org

Feel how long the thorn is | wikimedia commons

Author: Gu Yourong

Cover image source: gardensonline.com.au

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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