Blackberry Jam Fruit
By Peter Ray
The Blackberry Jam Fruit, Randia Formosa, is a shrub from tropical America that you might want to include in your collection if you have plenty of room. I would definitely classify it as a minor fruit – you wouldn’t want to take out your mango tree to make room for it, but it’s a novel and pleasant-tasting addition to your farm.
The fruit grows from seeds or cuttings. To my knowledge, there have been no selections for superior cultivars. The yellow fruits range from the size of a large olive to a small pecan. A selection with fruit the size of a large pecan would be much more worthwhile. The hard outer shell is inedible. The black interior is sweet and slightly acid, with a number of flat seeds a bit larger than most of us would like to swallow. If you’re one who eats seedy grapes seeds and all, you would have no problem eating this fruit the same way.
Blackberry jam fruit is said to withstand temperatures as low as 26 degree F. My experience has been that younger plants are much more tender. After some years of seeing them frozen to the ground repeatedly, this year I was rewarded with some fruit and the plants survived my low temperature of 27 degrees with protection by water spray. I would recommend growing them in containers to about three feet in size before putting them out in the ground.
If you don’t want to eat the fruit seeds and all, processing can be a bit tedious. I removed the contents of about three dozen fruits, added enough lemon juice to make a thick syrup, then strained out the seeds. I found the resulting syrup needed about two tablespoons of sugar to be sweet enough. The yield was about half a cup, and preparation time was about fifteen minutes. The result could be enjoyed on waffles or pancakes.
I’ll bring some seeds of this fruit to our next meeting. Maybe you’ll get the seedling that will be a big winner.
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Photo
Courtesy of Fruit Lover’s Nursery, Pahoa,
Hawaii
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