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Heirloom Plants & Gardens

Please help me identify this! Tomato or Pepper???

19 years ago

Hi! I'm a lurker here. I need to know what this new plant of mine is. I am from the Philippines, and I got this plant from a popular vacation place 2 hours away from Manila that has a temperature range of 16-30C. At first I thought they were tomatoes but the fruits have very tough skin and when I cracked them open, I found pepper-looking seeds. I have sown the seeds and I now have a lot of seedlings and yet, I still don't know what they are. Help please???

To view a photo, please go to this link and check in my album "My New Plants". There are two more plants there that I cannot identify. One is also fruit-bearing but nobody can tell me what it is!:

http://www.picturetrail.com/ricasantos1

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Comments (8)

mystdragyn
19 years ago
If it's not edible it probably isn't either one. Might be something in the nightshade family but it's not a pepper or a mater.
elise1449
19 years ago
The one on the bottom is a Nipple Fruit. They are members of the eggplant family, but are not edible.

Well, I tried to send a link to a site with pictures of this and got a message to the effect that this site is considered SPAM and warning not to try to circumvent the system. Therefore, if you will Google "Nipple Fruit" and then click the links that pop up, you will find a site with a nice picture of this fruit.

Elise
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dreamfrutas
19 years ago
Rica

do you have a few spare nipple fruit seeds to trade with me? Thanks Carlos dreamfrutas at yahoo.com

Your unknown fruits looks like they are from the solanum family.
bill_southerncal
19 years ago
It looks somewhat like a Turkish orange eggplant, both in the leaves and size when it's the end of its life. I am enclosing a link from Seeds of Change. If it's not this, it must be a relative.

Here is a link that might be useful: Turkish Orange eggplant pic from Seeds of change
ianna
19 years ago
Rica, it looks poisonous so don't eat it. It doesn't look like the Turkish Orange plant at all.
kristie8888
19 years ago
Doesn't look like Turkish Orange to me either. But I have seen it somewhere.
carolb_w_fl_coastal_9b
19 years ago
Leaves look like tomatillos, but no husk on fruit, so I'm guessing it's related, but edible???Who knows?

I doubt that touching your tongue to it would be harmful - I'd think it'd be bitter/yucky tasting if it were poisonous?
zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin
14 years ago
Wish I'd seen this thread earlier; it pre-dates my membership in GW. It would have been nice just to correspond with those who posted here from other countries.

Not sure what the plant is, but I have grown "Turkish Orange" eggplant, and agree with several others - this is not it. Nor does the fruit resemble potato seed. It certainly appears to be of the family Solanaceae.

I've grown several unusual members of the genus Solanum, and the only one that even faintly resembles the photo is the wild form of Solanum gilo. It also dries on the plant; while the fruits are edible when young, they are very bitter. I prefer to use them dried in floral arrangements. It is, however, thornless.

There are an incredible number of species in the family Solanaceae, and while quite a few are edible, many of them are toxic. It would be very risky to attempt to eat an unknown "nightshade" unless it could be positively identified. Cultivated members of the family tend to not be thorny... although there are exceptions. I grow a particularly thorny eggplant from the Philippines.

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