From Marin County, California

After a very long hiatus, I have posted another wonderful plant: Lycium chinese, that goes by the more famous name, Goji berry. Wiki tells me it also goes by Chinese wolfberry, mede berry, barbary matrimony vine, bocksdorn, Duke of Argyll’s tea tree, Murali, red medlar, or matrimony vine. I used to eat it when I was little back in Hong Kong and a few years back starting finding it in health food stores in New York labelled Tibetan goji (fantastically expensive!). Then last year sometime I came across it again in the English countryside, wild for the first time (and fantastically free!). Its my favorite, dried in tea adding a little sweetness, with little something to chew on when you’ve finished your cup. 

It 00:55 in Marin County, California

After a very long hiatus, I have posted another wonderful plant: Lycium chinese, that goes by the more famous name, Goji berry. Wiki tells me it also goes by Chinese wolfberry, mede berry, barbary matrimony vine, bocksdorn, Duke of Argyll’s tea tree, Murali, red medlar, or matrimony vine. I used to eat it when I was little back in Hong Kong and a few years back starting finding it in health food stores in New York labelled Tibetan goji (fantastically expensive!). Then last year sometime I came across it again in the English countryside, wild for the first time (and fantastically free!). Its my favorite, dried in tea adding a little sweetness, with little something to chew on when you’ve finished your cup. 

Its 4.14am and thoughts have shifted to…

…Aleurites moluccana (candlenut) which, I realise now, I have really seen growing all over Hong Kong. Unfortunately its Chinese New Year time and no nuts in sight, candle or otherwise. I have tasted these nuts in Bali, but I was eating them raw in which form, it turns out, is mildly toxic. The funny thing is when I was eating them, I had the distinct sense that there was something odd and not particularly healthy about their taste, but rationalised that if an ecovillage in the hills of northern Bali was growing these organically, shelling them and putting them into little baggies to sell to their guests, they really should be OK to eat. Oh the naiveté!

Two entries up!

The delectable Opuntia dillenii (Prickly pear) that we’ve been seeing growing in gardens in the New Territories. Yet to come across a wild grower but ever live in hope!

There is also the Berchemia lineata (Supple-jack) which I have yet to come across but the berries look enticing!