A Little Bite of History

A taste of neglected fruits grown by our ancestors beats a sound bite any day.

By Lee Reich

	Above: If you think of gooseberries as small and tart, check out some of the large dessert varieties, with green, white, red, or almost black skin enclosing sweet flesh. Photo Courtesy of Lee Reich

If you want to grow an heirloom fruit garden, your choices donêt stop at decrepit trees that Johnny Appleseed might have planted, or even newly propagated specimens of old-time favorites like pears or cherries.

Generations past grew many fruits barely known today, which not only made enjoyable snacking and delicious preserves, but were borne on plants attractive enough to double as landscape trees and shrubs. The best reason to grow these now uncommon fruits, though, is for the unique and delectable flavors they offer, flavors you still wonêt find in upscale markets today.

If you walked past the kitchen garden of a 19th-century home and took a deep breath, your nostrils might fill with a sweet, spicy scent wafting from the yellow, trumpet-shaped blooms of a clove currant (Ribes odoratum) bush. Then you would know to return in July, when the flowers would have turned to half-inch-diameter berries, smooth, shiny, and blue black. The flavor is sweet tart and very aromatic, good popped right into your mouth or cooked into jams or tarts. In his 1845 classic, The Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, Andrew Jackson Downing states that the fruits –are relished by some persons. I am one of them.

Clove currant is not a bush for a formal garden. Its arching stems often root where they touch ground and new shoots arise from spreading roots. With a bit of pruning, though, the shrub graduates from wild to informal, and with even more pruning, the bushes can be trained as small trees. As would be expected of a native to the Midwest, from Minnesota down to Texas, clove currant plants are tough, able to withstand cold, heat, and drought. Pests ,even deer, generally leave the plant alone.

Currant Status
More familiar, but still not widely grown today, are red and white currants. These fruits, the same except in color, were grown in America as far back as the 17th century. Downing lists 25 varieties. My favorites among the dozen I grow are Pink Champagne and Primus. Red and white currants rose in popularity up to the turn of the 20th century, but then were all but forgotten around 1920 when mistaken blame for spreading white pine blister rust led to a ban on them. The ban was lifted some decades ago and red and white currants are now experiencing a revival.

Leaves appear on these currant stems very early in the season, soon followed by strings of pale green flowers, not individually showy, but, taken together, give the whole bush a lacy look. The fruits, ripening in July, hang from the branches like shiny, translucent chains of beads. When they're backlit by the sun, you can see the seeds floating within the delicate spheres.

Closely related to currants and suffering the same rise, fall, then resurgence of popularity are gooseberries. Too many people consider gooseberries to be small, green, tart fruits, suitable only for cooking. In fact, there are many varieties of large –dessert” gooseberriesãI grow about 30 of them, whose tender green, white, red, or almost black skins enclose a sweet, aromatic flesh. I compare the flavors of my best varieties with that of grapes, apricot, and plum; each variety has its own unique flavor.

Gooseberries and red and white currants fruit best if they are pruned every year to remove stems more than three years old, and if the youngest stems are thinned so they donêt crowd each other. The plants can be grown as small bushes, trained as small trees, or grown as espaliers, such as the red currants I have trained on the fence around my vegetable garden. These berry plants do suffer occasionally from pests, but some varieties, such as •Hinnonmaki Yellow, Poorman, and •Glendaleê gooseberries, and Red Lake and Rondom currants, are pest resistant as well as great tasting.

Neglected Trees
In addition to these berries, our hypothetical 19th-century yard might contain some trees we wouldnêt recognize today. In spring the large, solitary, white or slightly blushing blossoms of the medlar (Mespilus germanica) are every bit as showy as wild roses. Unlike most other fruit trees, medlar opens its flowers after the stems begin growing, so the blossoms are framed by a backdrop of dark green leaves.

I feel safe in predicting that the fruits, which ripen in autumn, will never appear in the marketplace. First, theyêre too ugly, resembling small, russeted apples, tinged dull yellow or red, with their calyx ends (opposite the stems) flared open. A crabby-looking, brownish-green, truncated, little spheroid of unsympathetic appearance” is how J. C. Woodsford described the fruit in The Gardenerês Chronicle in 1939. And second, before being eaten, medlars must be bletted, which means harvested and put in a cool, moist room until their flesh turns brown and mushy.

The flavor of that brown mush is, however, delectable, something akin to rich, spicy applesauce, refreshingly brisk with winy overtones. The tree recommends itself to backyards in any century because itês also easy to care for, needing virtually nothing in the way of pest control or pruning. Medlar reached its peak of popularity during the Middle Ages but was a market fruit in Europe as late as the end of the 19th century.

You might also be surprised to find a white or common mulberry (Morus alba) being cultivated in the yard. This species was brought here from China so silkworms could feast on its foliage, and is rarely planted today because wild ones are so ubiquitous, but was valued a century ago. Henry Ward Beecher (reformer and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe) wrote in 1846, –I regard it as an indispensable addition to every fruit garden; and I speak what I think when I say that I had rather have one tree of Downingês Everbearing Mulberries than a bed of strawberries. Downing's Everbearing, selected and propagated for its superior tasting fruits, is no longer available, but I grow another variety, Illinois Everbearing, whose fruits are especially tasty.

Mulberry's status as the second most common weed tree in New York City is testimonial to its tolerance to abuse in the form of drought, pollution, and poor soil. Don't plant them near walkways, or stains from fallen fruit will find their way indoors on the bottoms of shoes. Red mulberry (Morus rubra), a native species, is attractive in the landscape because of its large leaves. If you want an especially appealing ornamental, look for one of the weeping forms, which not only produce delicious fruit but form –tents” big enough for a small child to hide in.

Lee Reich grows heirloom fruits in his backyard in New Paltz, New York, and is author of Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden (Timber Press, 2004).

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