LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS 



the berries appear, certain individual plants are 

 sprinkled with sacred meal and this business-like 

 prayer proffered: ''My father, I give you prayer 

 meal; I want many peaches." ^ 



To the same family belongs the genus Physalis, 

 some, perhaps most, species of which yield fruits 

 that may be eaten. They are distinguished by a 

 bladdery calyx which loosely envelops the small, 

 tomato-like berry. These plants are known to 

 Americans as Ground Cherries, and to the Spanish- 

 speaking residents of our Southwest as tomates del 

 campoy that is, ''wild tomatoes." Of the score or so 

 of species indigenous to the United States, Pliysalis 

 viscosa, Pursh, is one of the best known — a hairy, 

 sticky perennial, common in fields east of the Mis- 

 sissippi from Ontario to the Gulf. The nodding, 

 greenish-yellow flowers have a purplish-brown cen- 

 ter; and the yellow fruit is reported on excellent au- 

 thority to be the best. A species producing red fruit 

 (P. longifolia, Nutt.), found wild from Nebraska to 

 Texas and westward to Arizona, has been thought 

 worthy of cultivation by the Zuni Indians, who used 

 to grow it, and perhaps still do, in the women's 

 quaint little gardens on the slope of the river Zuni — 



1 Stevenson. "Ethnobotany of the Zuiii Indians." 30th Ann. Kept. 

 Bur. Amer. Ethnolofrv'- 



87 



