Plant · P-227

Ground Cherry

Physalis pruinosa

Ground Cherry is a compact husk cherry grown for small golden berries with a bittersweet flavor, eaten fresh, dried like a raisin, or cooked into pies and preserves; the fruit ripens inside a papery covering and drops when ready, so the harvest is gathered off the ground rather than picked. It handles heat, humidity, drought and poor soil better than its garden relatives once established, and it finishes its life cycle in a single hot summer after setting hundreds of fruit. Its real advantage is that it replants itself: every berry left ungleaned becomes next year's seedling, and hundreds of volunteers often turn up the following spring, so one hoeing or mulching round on the surplus is the only management most beds need. Every part of the plant except the ripe fruit is poisonous, including the husk, so fallen fruit and dying foliage should stay out of a poultry run.