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Description:
Use
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Pruning
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Names: |
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| Family | Sapotaceae |
| Genus & Species | Synsepalum dulcificum (don't get S. subcordatum, Giant Miracle Fruit, because it's fruits don't work) |
| Common Names | Miracle fruit. Miracle berry. Miraculous berry. Sweet berry. |
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| Size/Shape | Does well in a container. Rarely to 5 ft. indoors. Bush or small tree. Slow growing. Oval to pryamidal shaped bush. |
| Leaves | The plant has deep green, elongated leaves which grow in a spire-like habit. Regular, large-leaf and a hairy-leaf form are known. The attractive oval leaves are green with some wine stain. Simple, alternate 3-5 leaves clustered at branch tips. |
| Flowers | Small 1/4 inch white flowers. The fruit is a small bright red, ellipsoid berry approximately 2 to 3 cm long and containing a single seed. Flowers are white and brown. |
| Blooming Season | Produced in flushes through many months of the year. Repeatedly all year. Fruiting begins when plants are about 4 years of age. Seed to fruit in 2 to 5 years. |
| Fragrance | Flowers are fragrant. |
Use |
Although not sweet itself, when a single fruit is eaten and the fleshy pulp allowed to coat the taste buds of the tongue and inside of the mouth, an extraordinary effect occurs. The fruit will now allow one to eat a slice of lemon or lime without wincing. The marvelous aroma and inherent sweetness of the citrus remains but the sourness is almost completely covered. The effect remains for some 30 minutes or more. A relatively tasteless berry with an amazing side-effect. After eating one miracle fruit, sour things will instantly taste sweet. Eating even the sourest of lemons, one will taste only sugary sweetness. The effect lasts an hour or two. Berries are eaten fresh. Fruit is produced throughout the year and hundreds of berries can be harvested from a single plant. If the berry is left on the plant until it starts to dry like a raisin, the fruit itself is sweet. The small bright-red fruit is sweet with a mild and pleasant after-taste. It has the unique ability to change the taste buds so that, for an hour or more after eating it, everything sour or bitter will taste sweet. After eating one of the red holly-like fruits you would find that anything else that you eat within the next 2 hours will be either deliciously sweet, or would have a taste that has been noticeably enhanced. Fruit may be stored frozen. Heat destroys the taste-modifying activity. A natural chemical in the fruit masks the tongue’s sour taste buds so that lemons taste like lemonade or lemon pie, or lemon candy. The fruit has a unique glyco protein that inhibits tastebuds' perception of sour taste for half an hour to a couple of hours. Enhances flavor of grapefruit, strawberries. Once the fleshy, tasteless pulp coats your tongue, everything you eat for the next few hours or so will taste sweet. |
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| Propagation | Allow the roots of the plant to fill the container before transplanting into a larger one. Seeds or cuttings. Seed viability is short. Plant the cleaned seed immediately just below the soil line When shipping cleaned seed for others to plant, package in a small plastic bag and enclose a slightly moistened toweling. Seed that are allowed to dry can be shipped for at least two weeks but rapidly loose their viability. Mist cuttings. Seeds are very perishable. Barely cover seed when sowing. Seeds generally come up in about eight to ten weeks, but grow slowly the first year, often being only two to three inches tall at the end of almost one year of growth. It really takes three to four years before the plants reach a height of more than fifteen to twenty inches, and then they start to grow more rapidly. Cuttings take a long time to root. Seeds require scarification. |
| Soil | An acid soil is a must. They prefer a soil acidity of pH 4.5 to 5.8. This can be achieved by planting in equal parts Canadian acid peat and pine bark. Also peat and perlite mixes are said to give excellent result. Be sure that the soil is well draining. Very acidic. Rich, well drained medium. Fill a container with a 50:50 mix of peat moss and perlite; this combination will create an acidic environment with good drainage. |
| Water | Grows in wet areas. Does not like to sit in wet soils. Needs high humidity. Mist leaves with water. Waterlogged plant will succumb to root rot. Needs a lot of water year round. Water more often if the soil is sandy. Don't overwater, feel the soil first. |
| Food | Use an acid plant food. Feed more frequently during the summer months. Fertilize during the growing season. |
Pruning |
It may be kept pruned to the height desired and makes a unique bonsai. |
| Light | Partial shade. Bright light such as a well lit window. In the summer the plant can be moved with care to a warm, lightly shaded spot. Light shade. Full sun to light shade. Needs some shade. Bright light. Full sun. A sunny windowsill. Shade is needed when young. |
| Climate | Tropical. Hot. Constant warmth. Wind protection is needed when young. |
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| Source to Buy | Banana Tree seeds (They will only sell this one to Canada at the customer's own risk. They package it in damp material, so I suspect it will ship well.). Rainforest Seed Co. seeds. |
| http://tinyurl.com/h5a2j | |
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