Plant · P-527

Barbados Cherry

Malpighia emarginata

Barbados Cherry is an evergreen shrub that produces a small, bright red cherry-like fruit eaten fresh or cooked into juice, sauce, jelly, jam or wine - and it isn't grown for flavor alone: a single glass of the juice can carry as much vitamin C as 14 liters of orange juice. It bears its first fruit from seed in as little as two or three years and then crops two or three times a year over a long picking season. Clipped as a hedge it takes shearing well and blocks wind, though it needs frost-free-to-mild winters and does not tolerate salt spray near the coast.