Hong Hua Chinese Gooseberry
About
Chinese gooseberry is another (and older) name for kiwi fruit, a southeast-Asian vine that bears small, oval fruit with a thin brownish-green skin and a fuzzy surface. The flesh, which is a distinctive green, with tiny purplish seeds surrounding a white core, may be eaten raw or cooked.The history of the kiwifruit began in the Chang Kiang Valley of China. Called Yang Tao, it was considered a delicacy by the great Khans who relished the fruit's brilliant flavor and emerald-green color. Knowledge of the fruit expanded to other countries in the mid 1800s to 1900s. A collector for the Royal Horticultural Society of Britain send samples home in 1847, and another send seeds to England in 1900. Plants were first exported from China to the United States in 1904, and seeds were brought to New Zealand in 1906. Kiwifruit is available worldwide today and is produced in New Zealand, the United States, Italy, Japan, France, Greece, Spain, Australia, and Chile.Chinese gooseberry is a vigorous, deciduous, dioecious shrub that may climb to 25 feet. It has 5-inch oval leaves that are densely hairy underneath. When young, they are bright red but change to brown toward maturity. The vine is usually trained upon a trellis or pergola (Bailey and Topping 1950). The plants are usually spaced about 15 feet apart, 175 per acre (Avent 1959), with one staminate or male plant to 5 to 10 pistillate or female plants. Smith (1961) stated that no female plant should be more than three or four plants away from a male plant.The brownish oval 1 1/2 to 3-inch long fruit (fig. 76) may be peeled and eaten out of hand with sugar or honey, used in a salad, stewed, preserved, or used in sauces.A single pistillate plant, if well pollinated, may produce 700 pounds of fruit in a season.
