Weird Fruit of the Undefined Period of Time #2 - Pachysandra terminalis

You might recognize the name 'pachysandra.' It's a common landscape plant, although few people give it much heed. Well, except my partner's stepmother, Peggy, who hates it as though it is the root of all evil. It's roots are a bit fiendish if you're trying to remove it; it spreads primarily by thick, fleshy underground stems called rhizomes*. Under a bed full of pachysandra you will find a crowded network of rhizomes. Difficult as this network is to fully eradicate, pachysandra plants are unique, useful, and as it turns out, delicious.

Pachysandra is a genus containing several species. The most common up here in Boston is called Pachysandra terminalis, which has shiny, jaggedly-toothed leaves. I see other species on occasion, including P. procumbens, which is apparently native to the American South. P. terminalis is native to China, Korea, and Japan, and tends to be very aggressive in North America.

Mountain spurge, Pachysandra procumbens

The word 'pachysandra' itself means 'thick stamens', which are the male flower parts. Also, pachysandra is in the Buxaceae family of plants, which includes boxwoods. There is a fungal disease called boxwood blight that we're trying to stop from spreading here in New England. While pachysandra rarely shows symptoms, it can harbor the disease. If someone's boxwoods all die from blight, they may try to plant new ones, only to lose them as well, because the disease was lurking in the pachysandra patch. Any epidemiologists out there might be interested to know that in this case, pathologists recommend having only one of the two plants on your property to minimize the risk of spreading the disease.

P. terminalis - click to zoom and get a close look at those thick, fleshy stamens, the white things with red ends

Now that we've gotten through the dry part, let's get to the juicy story. A couple of weeks ago around the middle of October, I was blowing leaves like I do all day every day from October through the end of november. The property I was working on has a large bed of pachysandra, maybe 1000 square feet or so. As the stream of air from my blower moved through the leaves, I noticed something white I'd never seen before. I bent down to look more closely and found little fruits! About the size of a raspberry, they were all white, though translucent enough to show hints of the dark seeds inside. They also had two small, sharp, darker protrusions at the top of the fruit - remnants of where the style attached to the ovary. Collectively, they reminded me of a termite's or ant's head, but they were beautiful, so I took some home with me.

LtoR: Human finger, seed, translucent fruit, opaque (under-ripe?) fruit

As I was removing the seeds (as a present for Peggy, I know she'll love them), I was thinking about whether this fruit was edible. "Clearly not," I decided, "White fruit from a landscape plant, definitely poisonous." Landscape plants tend to be beautiful and toxic. Well, as you may have guessed by now, some internet research convinced me I could eat the fruits no problem. I was still a little worried, but I decided to taste a small piece and see how I felt.

I ended up eating them all! Once I got past the mental barrier of trying a new food that looked like a bug's head, I found quite a subtle and pleasant flavor. It was a very juicy fruit, wet like a grape but a bit less firm. The primary flavor reminded me of cucurbits in general (melons and squashes). It was mild with a hint of sweetness, somewhere between cucumber and honeydew melon. That flavor was tempered with a strong, dry, tannin-like flavor, just like the skin of a really good plum: bitter and sour in the very best way possible.

I only had a few, so I wasn't able to experiment with them or try to incorporate them in a prepared food, but next October, look for a follow-up post in which I will make pachysandra jam, pachysandra flambée, and duck a la pachysandra.

Keep them eyes peeled for the bounty,
The Regular Farmer

Have you tried a weird fruit that you want to share with The Regular Farmer? Put it in the comments and I might write about it!

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*Rhizomes grow perpendicular to the force of gravity, and as stems, they have many nodes, where buds form. They appear to be roots, because they are usually white and found underground, but the presence of nodes indicates that they are stems. From each node, roots and new shoots may sprout, and once established, may be separated from the mother plant without killing either.

First photo of P. procumbens: By James Henderson, Golden Delight Honey, Bugwood.org [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFr%C3%BChbl%C3%BChender_Bodendecker.JPG

Second photo of P. terminalis: By 4028mdk09 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APachysandra_procumbens_1241237.jpg

Third photo and blog post by Ryan Heisler are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.