Hi friends!
I'm in Western Province now in the middle of vast swamp forests with muddy tracks and the ground is very wet and muddy right now. (And still can access Internet, wow!)
Here we found fruiting vividly red wild grapes, possibly
Tetrastigma sp.. The hunters- and gatherers eat it out of the hand. Consistency is like harder grapes and tastes a bit sour. But the size is amazing, 2,5 - 4 cm (1 to almost 2 inches) flattened round fruits, 5-15 on each spike.
I tried it with some sugar and it developed a good and interesting taste, close to some grapes or plums. The unripe green fruits are also eaten, and are then like unripe crunchy apples and sour, but not as sour as a lemon.
Someone interested in breeding could develop a sweet variety?
I think it's a good alternative for ultratropics where common grapes fails, and the fruits are so big compared to ordinary grapes and other wild grapes. Could be used for preserves or wine equal to grapes I think.
We can offer about 40 seeds = maybe 4-8 packets of 10 or 5 seeds.
We also found a
Garcinia sp. Pale green, a rather square fruit 5 cm long and 4 cm wide (2 in long, slightly smaller on sides) when ripe. It's picked from the ground. Tree about 7 m tall (21 ft). But yikes, it was the sourest Garcinia I ever tried! The people said the fruit like plastic with juice inside it. I thought they were exaggerating, but indeed they were right! I put one fruit segment into my mouth and tried to chew it, but it was like a plastic ball, so I with some effort bit a small hole in it and a lemon-like sour juice came out...
I won't keep seeds for myself of this tree, as we've limited land so we feel our lime tree is good enough. But if someone else wants it, we have some fruits here that we will clean when we depart. Only 10 fruits with one single seed in each available.
We'll post the seeds when we get back home around the shift of August/September.PS tried to upload photos but too slow internet connection
Will retry again later.
