So: I was about to mention something about the miracle fruit. What, you've never heard of miracle fruits? Well siddown and get your learn on, I'm here to spackle the gaps in your botanical knowledge. (Alternatively, just google "miracle fruit" and wade through a couple hundred million pages' worth of unfiltered data.) The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum is a shortish evergreen shrub native to somewhere or other in Africa. It is unremarkable in appearance, although you might notice its jellybean-sized berries if you happened to see one in fruit. If you got the notion to eat one of the berries-- always a gamble if you don't know the plant!-- you would note that much of the berry is comprised of the seed, and that the fruit is a little bit sweet. No big deal, you'd think; no "miracle" here, for sure.
But you'd be wrong there. The miracle would become evident when you next tasted anything sour. In fact, it would not be sour at all, but very pleasantly sweet. That's what the miracle fruit does: it makes sour taste sweet. I was a docent at the US Botanic Garden (USBG) in Washington D.C. some years ago, and I would demonstrate this effect by eating a berry off one of the bushes we had there and then procuring a lemon from one of the trees in the Garden Court, slicing it open then taking a big mouthful of the lemon, then watching the tourists' eyes bulge and their lips pucker in vicarious revulsion. But to me, it tasted like wonderfully sweet lemonade. Good stuff! The pomegranates that grow across the street from the USBG were made indescribably delicious by the miracle fruit. The effect lasts... I forget how long, maybe an hour or so, to the best of my recollection. It is worth noting that not everything tastes better when it's sweet, by the way. I remember grabbing some pizza after an afternoon's worth of tours -and one or two miracle fruit stunts- and it was... not good. The psychic shock of the mismatch of expectation and taste was akin to the kind of shock one receives when turning on the faucet to wash one's hands after some nincompoop has been running scalding hot water for the immediately preceding 15 minutes. Yeah, just like that, only in a gustatory way.
Anyway- so what's the deal with my mentioning the miracle fruit anyway? Last year about this time, I got a small specimen of the plant from Logee's Greeenhouse. It's a difficult plant to grow, many specimens failing to thrive in the first year. But my specimen is doing pretty well. So well, in fact, that, if I am not mistaken, it is producing flowers! And of course, flowers mean fruits!! It's early days as yet, and I wouldn't want to jinx it, but, well, just look here and see for yourself:
Oh, and the putative miracle fruit is not the only "miracle" 'round these parts. It looks like 4 and maybe even 5 of my arhat vines have sprouted. Arhat is a cucurbit, that is, a member of the cucumber family, but unlike most cucumbers, its germination is slow and spotty. And I do mean SLOW. The seeds that I sowed in mid-March are just now starting to sprout! Of the 15 or so seeds I sowed last year, 2 actually sprouted, and both died quite premature deaths, failing to thrive for reasons that are still unknown to me. Arhat, coincidentally, has a sweetening effect, although not of the same sort as that of the miracle fruit. The pulp of the fruit is supersweet, apparently, and it has been added to "low-calorie" soft drinks in lieu of those abominable artificials like acesulfame and sucralose. Yuck, it gives me the shudders just thinking of what those things taste like... I'm very excited to have a few good specimens of this vine reach maturity and provide a few fruits.
Less miraculous is my abundant crop of stevia. Also known as "sweet-leaf", Stevia rebaudiana has gone so mainstream that it is readily obtainable in plant form at places like Home Depot and Kroger. It grows well in a variety of soils, including the clayey morass that is my front-yard herb garden. It's easy to use, too- pluck a few leaves, let'em dry out and then pulverize them in the palm of your hand (if it's well and truly dried out, it'll turn into a powder with little time and effort), then dump it into your tea. Or coffee, if tea is not your, umm, cup of tea. Ah, you know what I mean.
Sweet.
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