Cape Gooseberry

The Cape gooseberry, Physalis peruviana, is a South American fruit plant in the nightshade family whose genetic diversity centers on the Andes of Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, with the common name reflecting its long cultivation history around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. Its small round berries, each enclosed in a papery husk, ripen to a bright yellow-orange and taste sweet with a mildly tart, grape-like flavor. Despite the name, it is not botanically related to true gooseberries of the genus Ribes; it belongs instead to the same nightshade family as tomatoes and tomatillos. It is eaten fresh in salads, cooked into jams and dessert sauces, blended into smoothies, and used as a decorative garnish because of its striking papery calyx, and it has been cultivated in England since the late eighteenth century.