Just to clarify when you say Physalis do you mean the flower Chinese Lantern, Cape Gooseberry or Tomatillo which are all members of the Physalis genus . i grow the last two and treat them as annuals.
That's a good point - I certainly use 2 of the three names you mention as if they exclude the Cape Gooseberry.
Mea Culpa -
but:
Each of the 2 I do use describes a fairly limited range of species and using the common name creates very little ambiguity.
Cape Gooseberry is a particularly lousy name covering a much wider range of species. Neither word is accurate for what is normally a very sweet fruit (sweet enough to eat raw even when not entirely ripe) of several distinct species - none of which emerged from any significant cape - least of all the Cape of Good Hope.
Any attempt at distinguishing between the species by using other common names has failed - every time a new one emerges it gets used for all of them.
It would be easier to extend any of the 5 or 6 common names with what they aren't eg. "annual cape gooseberry/golden berry" for P. pruinosa; "cape gooseberry that doesn't taste of nail varnish" for P. mollis.
But the last one doesn't work because I don't know what the rest of the species taste like. Not to mention a slew of possible hybrids.
From now on if I'm too lazy to use binomials (and I'm always worried with Physalis that I've got them wrong) I will try to use either:
Physalis NTFF (not a tomatillo or a florists flower) or
Physalis ENT (edible but not tomatillo).
I prefer the latter but I'm open to ideas...
NB. I grew P. peruviana once about 41 years ago but I got very few fruit in the first year - I did enjoy them - though I thought that was despite them being only just ripe. It was a mild winter that year and the plant re-appeared from its rudimentary cold frame and gave me quite a few fruits - that was when I found the 'despite" should have been 'because' - I didn't like the "organic solvent" overtones of the ripe fruit or the "petrol headache" they gave me.
I wasn't bothered when the next winter killed it, and soon after I discovered the delights of the 100% annual P. pruinosa - which was also called P. pubescens at the time, though nowadays this only has limited acceptance in the form P. pubescens
var. grisea - it's more cumbersome but it does try to recognise that the cultivated forms are significantly different from the wild ones.
George - this is interesting - are you getting decent yields from annual growth without using P. pruinosa? if so are you using overwintered cuttings? In my experience with P. mollis this is much better than relying on seedlings though not as good as doing what you can to molly
coddle the old plant with drainage and mulch.
P. pruinosa is rarely more than 60cm high and wide, and tends to stand upright with a clear main trunk to about 50% high, closely branched to make a dense head, and only its lower branches on the ground. Occasionally I've seen a prostrate one but still dense, there's very little view of soil. Both the perennial species I've grown sprawl much more with many branches from nearly ground level which, given the opportunity, quickly droop to give a spidery look.
(I may be wrong about mollis - Davesgarden insists his photo of a very under-ripe fruit of 'Aunt Molly's' is Ground Cherry Physalis pubescens var. integrifolia - but I have more faith in the Polish sense of humour).
Cheers.
PS. "Kiwi fruit" is at least terse and has achieved widespread acceptance despite not looking like a kiwi (or tasting like one for that matter), and not coming from anywhere near NZ (though I can't put my hand on heart and say NZ has
NO indigenous Actinidia species). At least "fruit" doesn't refer to something it's not - which is why I prefer it to "Chinese gooseberry"...
