More importantly, can we garnish a cocktail with it?
September 30, 2009 10:11 PM   Subscribe

Found this mutant-cherry fruit on a tree near Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon today. Can you identify it? Can we eat it?
posted by halogen to Science & Nature (13 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I am not advising that you eat this, by any means, but it looks a little bit like a lychee to me.

(IANAB--I am not a botanist.)
posted by teamparka at 10:16 PM on September 30, 2009


It looks a little like immature lychee fruit, but it's hard to tell for sure. If it is lychee, it would have white (edible) fruit underneath the thin inedible rind.
posted by empyrean at 10:19 PM on September 30, 2009


And upon review, agreeing with sarabeth that it's a bad, bad idea to eat this without absolute identification.
posted by empyrean at 10:21 PM on September 30, 2009


Best answer: That's a dogwood of some sort. Looks a little less smooth than kousa dogwood fruit usually is. Could also be a Pacific dogwood, AFAIK neither will kill you but both taste kinda gross.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 10:24 PM on September 30, 2009


Response by poster: I was joking about eating it, sorry.
posted by halogen at 10:25 PM on September 30, 2009


Best answer: It is a dogwood fruit. It should be edible.
posted by Good Brain at 10:25 PM on September 30, 2009


Taste it and see what happens. BAH!

(I mean let us know what you find out.)
posted by at the crossroads at 10:31 PM on September 30, 2009


Response by poster: The soft core tastes pretty good, actually, but the rind and all the seeds are too much trouble to deal with. Looks good in Campari & soda.
posted by halogen at 10:31 PM on September 30, 2009


I've seen those on Hawthorne & Belmont, too. THEY'RE EVERYWHERE, THE MUTANTS. &, so my comment is addressing the question, yes, you can eat it. You can eat nearly anything with enough time & willpower.
posted by opossumnus at 10:58 PM on September 30, 2009


I ate one once and I'm still here. Tasted sort of like a wild rosehip.
posted by bubukaba at 11:19 PM on September 30, 2009


Best answer: Why, of all the imaginable things that might have been used to indicate size, did you use an Australian 50c coin? Just wondering.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:10 AM on October 1, 2009 [7 favorites]


Kousa dogwood. Edible, but a little bland and mealy.
posted by Red Loop at 3:03 AM on October 1, 2009


Thank you! There's a tree with these berries right outside my kids' daycare and I've been forever warning them not to eat the fruit because I had no idea what they were. Yey for AskMe. (Oh, and I was wondering about the coin too...)
posted by widdershins at 9:57 AM on October 1, 2009


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