THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, July 27, 1853 
! 252 
Physalis edulis was so named, in tlie “ Botanical 
j Magazine ” (t. 1068), upon a very slender pretext: tlie 
j lawful name of the plant was Physalis pubescens. 
In the temperate parts of Peru, and in Chili, there 
are two kinds of Physalis : one an annual, Peruviana, 
and our present subject. 
The annual is a medicinal plant, like our European 
Alkekengi; and the perennial, our Cape Gooseberry, 
; is used in the dessert, and in cookery and preserves. 
From the descriptions of these two plants, by the 
| authors of the “ Flora Peruviana,” and by Father 
i Feuillee, a Frenchman, who first described the annual, 
Linnseus could not make out which was which from 
| his specimens. Therefore, to make the thing more 
| clear, when the Cape Gooseberry was well known in 
England, the “ Botanical Magazine ” called the edible 
! kind edulis, and the medicinal kind Peruviana ; thus 
quashing the proper name ( pubescens ) altogether. Yet 
the name pubescens is retained in our very best cata¬ 
logues to this very day. 
Amongst the first people who took advantage of this 
new fruit, discovered in Peru, were the Cape colonists, 
who introduced it to the Cape, whence it was sent to 
the early settlers of New South Wales as a promising 
plant for their climate; and these settlers, having 
other fish to fry than the slippery eels in botany, called 
their new acquisition after the place they had it from, 
and the uses they made of it. It came nearest to 
the use of the Gooseberry at home : hence the origin 
of the name, “ Cape Gooseberry,” for a Peruvian 
plant. 
Every part of the plant is covered with a soft 
down,—pubescence is the botanical name of such con¬ 
dition. Most of the soft-leaved plants, which be¬ 
long to the same order, the order of Solanums, are 
peculiarly tasteful to the red spider, and are so liable 
to its attacks, that in the times of hot flues, high night 
temperature, and husky atmosphere of our glass 
houses, the Cape Gooseberry was one of the plagues 
of gardeners. Any new foreign plant, which was then 
thought much of, was wintered in the stove, “ for fear 
of accident ” in any other house ; and in the stove the 
Cape Gooseberry is evergreen, and more than ever 
liable to the inroads of the greatest enemy of the 
forcing gardener of those days. They, the forcers of 
the last generation, were right glad, when the frost 
was over, to allow them to plant out their Cape Goose¬ 
berry plants, against the south walls, like Tomatoes. 
In September, some took cuttings of their Cape Goose¬ 
berry, struck them in a hotbed, and kept them in the 
stove through the winter; and some took up the old 
plants, as we do the scarlet Geraniums, and kept 
them on the curbs of the pine stove during the winter; 
j while others took up the old plants, and cut them 
down like Dahlias, but wintered them just like Pine 
| Apples. 
Were it not for fear of being thought to be too old 
to be good for much, I could tell of many other plants, 
which I myself had seen under treatment, in my early 
I days, that no gardener of the hothouse-school would 
| now believe it possible to keep alive; but so it was. 
i Yet the difference was not as between flues and hot- 
j water pipes in the present day, but far worse than 
that. A high winter temperature was very distressing 
i to plants in general, and very much greater to those 
from' temperate regions, like the Cape Gooseberry. 
But when we consider the excessive dryness of the 
air of hothouses, consequent upon the great heat of 
the flues in those days, and the want of a proper 
knowledge of the good that a moistened air would do 
j to plants, we need not wonder that a fruit plant, which 
j is naturally very liable to the attacks of the red spider, 
and not very promising to pay for the trouble and 
j care of the garden, had soon fallen into disuse. 
But modern gardening is a different art, since the 
introduction of the hot-water system, from what it 
was in those days, and gardeners now think it an easy 
matter to accomplish what their fathers considered 
impossibilities. The revival of the profitable culture 
of Physalis edulis is the most recent example of that 
“ easy matter.” 
For the last ten or a dozen years the cultivation of 
this “ new fruit ” was slowly and steadily making its 
way among a few great private families, but it was not 
till last November, at Willis’s Rooms, that it was 
brought out prominently before the public; and, this 
spring, the fashionable world “took to it” at their 
dinners,—not as a new fashion, but as a really good 
thing, when properly done. 
For its medicinal virtues we have the testimony of 
Feuillee, who first described the Peruvian Alkekengi, 
which is closely related to the Cape Gooseberry. He 
says the doctors, in South America, make great use of 
the berries in calculous disorders, and gives the manner 
of using them, which is, “ to bruise four or five of the 
berries, either in common water, or white wine, giving 
it the patient to drink, when the success is astonishing.” 
The Duke of Malakoff, General Pelissier, is said to be 
very partial to it, and to “look for it ” when he goes 
out to drive about London. I had a dish of it lately 
from a Scottish nobleman, who is as fond of it as his 
Grace of Malakoff, and who had it regularly at his 
dinners, both here and in Scotland, for some time. 
I have been asked to write out an accouut of the 
proper way of growing it, but, to tell the truth, I 
did not well know the best way myself; and recollecting 
having read, not long ago, a specious dissertation on 
crossing plants, by one of our best English writers ; 
and knowing perfectly well, from my own experience, 
that the said writer did not know the value of a straw 
about some of the different points which he thought 
he made out so plain by clear reasoning; and feeling 
for him, and determining not to be caught in such a 
trap,—assuming a perfect knowledge of a subject which 
I did not understand,—I went about to see and hear 
how the gardeners managed to give such a zest to 
this “new fruit;” and, after seeing what I could, 
I came to the conclusion that the practice of Mr. 
Kidd, our friend with the Marquis of Breadalbane, at 
the Stud House, Hampton Court, is the simplest, the 
best, and the most profitable to follow. And I may 
further add, that any one who can keep a scarlet 
Geranium over the winter, and can fruit a Peach in 
a pot, or against a wall, will have very little to add to 
his stock of gardening knowledge, to enable him to 
have a dish of Physalis edulis. 
Mr. Kidd has simplified the treatment of Physalis 
edulis, as much as he did that of the Tomatoes, which 
he grows, this season, right out in the open garden, 
without even the aid of a wall or fence. He turned a 
large piece of ground into ridge-and-furrow shape, 
running east and west on the south side,—the slope 
from the ridge to the furrow is at about forty-five 
degrees of angle, and about four feet in width,—and on 
this slope the Tomatoes are as promising as they were 
this time last year on the wall border. 
The next move will be to hear of the Cape Goose¬ 
berry being bedded out on similar ridges, and ripening 
fruit by the bushel for pies, puddings, and preserves, 
and for one of the most useful dishes for the dessert. 
Modern gardening has done wonders, and this is one 
of the latest. The natural taste and flavour of this 
fruit in Peru, can now be enjoyed for the first time in 
England. 
The plants must not be had from seeds, but from 
cuttings, and from cuttings they will fruit all the year 
round, where people have the convenience of stoves. 
But, for the great bulk o growers, the best way is to 
