Uncommon fruits make for an interesting garden and salad

Have you ever tasted a black cap? Or a wineberry? If so, you’ve spent a considerable amount of time walking the hills and woods edging the Appalachian Mountains, where both of these delicious fruits grow wild and are as common back there as apples and oranges are to Californians.

While neither of these berries grow here, that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the fun of discovering new and delectable fruits. By including some strange fruits in your garden, you add interest to familiar garden plants, find new flavors and you may even prolong your life. There’s an old adage that says every time you taste a new food, you add 75 days to your life.

Not only that, but when your neighbor comes over to talk plants, you can play farmer by looking at the ground as you scuff your shoe in the dirt and offer to show him or her your paw paws.

The pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) is native to the Upper Midwest, especially Kentucky, but it grows well in most of the United States, including our region. Given our hot, dry summers, it’s best to plant this understory tree, which grows 15-20 feet tall when mature, in a partially shady spot and give it regular summer water. It has large, tropical-looking leaves and if it likes the spot you’ve given it, will produce many 3- to 6-inch oblong fruits. You’ll need two varieties for good pollination. The fruits turn yellow when ripe. Some folks think the flesh inside tastes like bananas, others say vanilla custard. Either way, paw paws are delicious. You can order them from Raintree Nursery in Washington. Just ask for varieties selected for California conditions.

The Japanese raisin tree (Hovenia dulcis) is an odd duck seldom seen around here. It will sail through our relatively mild winters, though. In fact, there is a specimen in the Los Angeles Arboretum and another at the nearby Huntington Gardens. It’s a fast-growing tree that reaches 15-18 feet in just a few years. The “raisins” are actually swollen flower stems at the tip of which seeds will form. These stems are full of sweet sap that is very edible and sometimes substituted for honey or made into wine. When dried, they taste like raisins. Rolling River Nursery in Oakland and Dave’s Garden in Visalia sell them.

Sunset’s Western Garden Book says that the American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is well suited to its Zones 14-16, which just about covers most of Sonoma and Napa counties. This persimmon, native to the eastern and southeastern U.S., bears smaller fruits than the familiar Fuyu and Hachiya persimmons brought here from Japan.

Like the astringent Hachiyas, the fruits will blet, which means to ripen off the tree. If you want any of these super sweet fruits for yourself, pick them still hard. Otherwise, if you let them ripen on the tree, you’ll have to fight with the possums and raccoons for first dibs. Stark Brothers Nursery sells them.

Although black currants (Ribes nigrum) are much happier in the cold winter climate back East, I have seen a bush fruiting at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Occidental. They are worth a try. Their small black fruits - about the size of your little fingernail - have a unique musky, rustic scent and flavor that’s addicting. The pressed juice is used to make cassis. If you have the fresh fruit, heat gently to get the juice running, then press through cheesecloth and sweeten to taste with white sugar or simple syrup. Now make a lemon Bavarian and pour this syrup over it and be prepared for as delicious a dessert as you can imagine. If you don’t have the fresh fruit, use cassis.

Once established, black currants are easily propagated from cuttings taken in early spring, dipped in rooting hormone and placed in a box of good soil in a shady spot, kept well-watered over summer so roots form, then planted the following spring. They grow about as tall as you are. Rolling River Nursery in Oakland sells them.

You will have something to talk about with other gardeners when you unveil your jujube tree (Ziziphus jujuba). They will immediately think of those chewy red candies that tug at your fillings when you eat them in the movie theater.

But you will explain that this beautiful shade tree grows 15-30 feet tall and bears immature green fruits that have the consistency and flavor of apples, mellowing to a wrinkled brown maturity when they taste like dates. The fruits are small - a half-inch to a little over 1-inch ovals with a single hard pit in the center. Again, they’re carried by the folks at Rolling River Nursery.