I made a Physalis species ID Guide to help distinguish between Physalis species, especially among cultivated & wild species commonly found growing in the U.S.
I figured since we’re gonna be crossing species & making landraces, a guide would be helpful!
Thank you. I’m kicking myself for not eating the mature berries from where I used to live. Likely Physalis heterophylla growing thick in a corner of my backyard. Thought they’d all be poisonous.
Oh, that’s a pity! I wonder if the people living there now would be willing to let you gather some this year? (Or, if they’re too far away to drop by, maybe you could send them a snail-mail letter and ask if they’d be willing to send you some berries in exchange for you reimbursing them for the postage. I’ve done that once before!)
Your welcome! Physalis are pretty widespread, surely there’s a local groundcherry species growing where you live. What area are you located? INaturalist is a good resource to see which species are growing where you live.
I put them in Google Lens. It definitely agrees with me that they are Physalis, but seems unclear with one. Possibly Physalis longifolia or Physalis virginiana var. virginiana?
Wait why do you pick them green? Or do you just let these continue ripening at home?
@remobec I think what you have is Physalis longifolia & probably Yellow Anther Smooth Groundcherry (Physalis longifolia var. longifolia) because the anthers are yellow. Separating P. longifolia from P. virginiana is tricky since they look so similar but when in fruit it’s much easier.
Nice find, definitely should harvest fruit when they ripen. Very delicious for their small size, like Lemon Candy!
I don’t know, can’t find nothing about Physalis on Feedipedia.
Werid… I don’t think that’s true because I have the same exact species Physalis longifolia and mine fully ripens yellow (I can also see yours are partially yellow as well. I’m curious because as far I know, only Physalis ixocarpa has varities that fully ripen green. I also believe Physalis longifolia var. subglabrata & Physalis longifolia var. longifolia both ripen yellow.
On my F1 generation of p.grisea crosses I had at least one cross that effectively ripened to green. They only had light tinge like you’d have in tomatillos that never changed and the taste wasn’t too sweet. None of that in F2 even if I didn’t discard them in the F1 selection, but was planning to only select in F2 to have as much diversity. Must be some rare regressive trait that need just the right parents. Otherwise it would have shown in the F2.
I don’t put a lot of weight on exact IDs or tidy categories in my garden. I treat them as guesses—useful sometimes, but not something I build my understanding around.
The perennial physalis I grow came from the nearby wildlands. I don’t isolate anything, so promiscuous pollination happens freely. What I see in the field doesn’t sort itself into clean boxes—more of a spectrum of traits showing up in different combinations.
I taste the fruits and save seeds from the ones I enjoy, without reference to their color. I let the population evolve as it will.
So when I say “green when ripe,” I don’t mean it as a fixed species trait. I mean: in this place, in this population, under these conditions, the pattern shows up often enough to notice.
You might grow something labeled the same and see a different expression—and that fits how I expect fuzzy biology to behave. Local populations adapt, intermingle, and drift.
I don’t think of it as something special so much as something normal, once we stop holding plants to strict definitions.
I select my tomatillos for yellow-when-ripe—or purple.
Very interesting… I guess it happens in other species as well.
Makes sense, Especially with the crazy let everything hybridize/landrace style of gardening, line between species blur so much that have effectively created your own new local species.
True! Then my local wild Physalis longifolia is a very different ecotype from yours & thus if both populations are brought together (along with other’s from GTS Members), we might get enough diversity to make an epic GTS landrace! Especially if we cross them with Tomatillos & other Groundcherry species.
Also looking back I’m not sure how big that bowl is, yours look bigger than what I have. If that’s the case you might have a different species after all.
Nice! Have you gotten any starburst purple look from your hybrids yet?
This is a Hybrid between Purple Coban x Queen of Malinaclo, made by Taylor. (Physalis ixocarpa)
(Or, if they’re too far away to drop by, maybe you could send them a snail-mail letter and ask if they’d be willing to send you some berries in exchange for you reimbursing them for the postage. I’ve done that once before!)
