The Cape Gooseberry grows in my garden like the natural I thought it was! How surprised was I to discover it is named for the Cape of South America not South Africa. It has an extensive list of common names and I love the South African one of Golden Berry and the Cape Dutch names of pompelmoes or apelliefie. In Chile it's known by the romantic moniker - bolsa de amor which I delightfully presume means "bag of love".
(The husk that encloses the fruit is large and loose)I remember picking bowlfuls as a young girl when staying with my Aunt Iris in Natal. The straggly bushes grew abundantly at the bottom of the garden around her compost heap and Aunty Iris stewed them with sugar and served them that night with ice cream after dinner. It was Angel's food to me! Nowadays I snack on them whenever I walk past and see a ripe and ready berry. I look forward to the day I can harvest a cupful of berries to blend with frozen banana which is my ice cream now that I am eating Raw Vegan.
There are half a dozen bushes growing in various places around the garden that thankfully withstood the heavy rainfalls and several hail drops experienced last week. They are all laden with berries in the process of ripening. I have read that these fruits are poisonous when green. And when ripe they have a golden oily skin filled with delicious sweet and tangy seedy pulp.
Gooseberries are very high in phosphorus and vitamin C and have a good dose of calcium and Niacin and appreciable levels of carotene, iron, riboflavin and thiamine.
In South Africa, the heated leaves are applied as poultices on inflammations and the Zulus administer the leaf infusion as an enema to relieve abdominal ailments in children. In Colombia, the leaf decoction is taken as a diuretic and antiasthmatic.
