Aronia's common name is chokecherry, which pretty much says what you need to know about its flavor. It makes great-tasting jelly, though. And it's a pretty striking looking shrub in the fall, with clusters of black fruit held above brilliant red foliage.

Aronia melanocarpa has black fruits. A. X prunifolia produces purple ones and A. arbutifolia red.

Aronia juice is delicious, but like unsweetened pure cranberry juice, is an acquired taste. It is excellent mixed with other juices, especially apple or grape, as that provides enough natural sweetening to be a bit more palatable to most taste buds. Otherwise, best prepare a sugar syrup to go along with :-) And it mixes well with just about anything, from lemonade to vodka (aronia juice Cosmopolitans - YUM!!). Also has about the highest antioxidant levels ounce per ounce of any fruit.

Aronias- I'll second other opinions- great for juice or preserves but bitter fresth. Sea buckthorn is sweet with an odd musky taste- usually used for juice or preserves. Be careful where you plant it as it suckers and spreads agressively. Goumis IMO are sweet with an odd aftertaste; again maybe good for preserves; they are great for dry sunny areas. Blue honeysuckle- why bother in a zone where blueberries thrive. Not as good a flavor as blueberry, poor production in the NW, but very very hardy.

I would say most of those you mention can't hold a candle to a blueberry, except for Aronia. Aronia are a truly great fruit. They are not good to eat raw but very productive of a high quality very healthful fruit that tastes great cooked and strained and used as a sauce thickened with cornstarch or made into a gelatin dessert; I like to add Almond flavoring. My 2 bushes are like nearly 10' tall and totally loaded with fruit every year. Unlike blueberries which ripen slowly a few in a cluster and must be carefully picked so as not to break off the green ones, Aronia ripen in big clusters, all the berries ripening at the same time in the cluster and all over the bush, so I just break off the clusters a grocery bag at a time, then sit around in the evening pulling the berries off the clusters and putting them in ziplock bags to freeze. I get enough to last for a year, cooking a bag or more a week.

But I have a lot of blueberries too because I like the taste fresh, in fact they never really make it to the freezer. Grow both for the best of both worlds. I like the evergreen blueberries, especially Legacy and Sunshine Blue, and I have a lot of varieties so some are early and some late. The fall color is great, too.

My Sea buckthorn seedlings have been very shy to bear, and also the grafted one, which has had only a few fruits. Maybe they are developing without a pollinator. I was not impressed with the taste. Some people seem to get a lot of fruit, though. It's supposed to be healthful.

My Goumi plants are large and have a lot of berries but the taste is not sensational and the seeds are large and the amount of pulp small. The seeds are a discouragement to me in trying to cook them. Once the birds see them they disappear fast.

I haven't seen good enough reviews on the blue honeysuckles to try them instead of blueberries.

Thanks for all of the feedback. It sounds like none of these fruits are exceedingly worthwile. I'll probably skip them for now, especially since I always grow medlars which are bizarre enough on their own.

I've purchased and am adding a white-flowering Akebia quinata to my existing chocolate-flowering one. I hear that they tend to fruit when two varieties are planted together (I've grown the brown-flowered one for decades and have never seen it fruit, but it's always been grown solo).

Has anyone had their akebia fruit? Was it growing by itself or did you have another plant nearby? And, most important, did you taste it and was it any good? :)

Take care,
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful:

Grant, have you seen the A.q. with the variegated leaves, something a little different, Gold and green, mine has lost it's variegation :-( There is also a A.q. with white flowers and one with pink. There is a gal up my way who has them all, she has all kinds of unique things in her garden. A real plants person. I've never had the fruit on my A.q. don't think it gets warm enough here. Thanks for the pic, now at least I know what it looks like.

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I have tasted Akebia fruit- you eat the pulp around the seeds. Sweet and bland. I think (based on personal evidence not research)that the purple flowered Akebia is a female and the pale flowered one is male. We grew the pale flowered one for years without fruit; planted a purple flowered one and it sets fruit every year and the pale one continues to be fruitless.

Akebia quinata is monoecious - male and female flowers appear on the same vine. While technically self-fertile, literature indicates a need for hand pollination on a single plant; otherwise two or more vines are needed to develop fruit.

I've never felt the need to grow more than one as the fruit is unlikely to hit the top of anyone's menu :-) Very bland and just barely sweet, it is the texture that I find off-putting - gummy and with the consistancy of soupy tapioca. The experience of my first (and only) akebia fruit tasting was sufficiently unpleasant to stay with me for years. And since eating out of hand is about the only way anyone has come up with, I'll pass. Might be worth trying as a curiosity, but the sweetly fragrant flowers were enough of an incentive for me.

And for what its worth Grant, you are the only person I've encountered to admit to liking medlars, which are another, oddly textured fruit with a hard-to-acquire taste!

LOL, thanks for the latest Fruit Reviews. Looks like akebia fruit will be more for visual than culinary, interest. :)

Aftermidnight, yes, I've seen the pink, brown and white flowered cultivars. They're all great-looking. Most larger nurseries in town have these three types, but I haven't seen any of the variegated-leaf ones (want want want). Thanks for mentioning it. I'm adding the white-flowering one mostly for visual effect mixed in with the chocolate flowered one, but it got me thinking about the possibility of fruit and if they were even good to eat (apparently not very, heh heh). Still, I think they look neat so I'll do a little pollination this year just to see if I can get some. And yes, I'll give them a little taste (possibly very little).

Medlars: yes, they're an aquired taste (and texture!), but I sure like them. I've seen some very unflattering descriptions of the texture (see Trees of Seattle 2nd ed., lol), but I like them if they're properly aged. I've planted them at each of my gardens in Seattle and they do make very attractive little trees and the flowers are quite pretty. I wonder what the current owners think of the fruit?

Thanks again for the taste tests...keep them coming.
Happy gardening, and eating,
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: medlars

Grant- I know what you're missing on your list- mulberries! Even if you don't have room for a large tree you could grow a weeping one, it's a beautiful specimen tree and mine bears lots of small but very tasty berries. And if you have room for a tree, I think they can be pruned to the height you want, a black mulberry like Black Beauty would be great, or Illinois Everbearing.

As for Akebia, I have had fruit a couple of years. I happen to like gummy and even slimy textures (okra lover) and I liked the texture and the mild sweet tropical taste, with no off taste. I would say it's slightly like a banana though a clear gel. I hope I get a good crop this year. I vote Yum. And they look like the fruit from outer space. Unbelievable plastic-looking lavender pod.

Other bush fruits I consider mostly worthwhile are currants. I don't like the white ones at all, too bland. The red ones I like as a tart snack when I'm working outside all day and need a quick pick-me-up, but I don't like them as much as Aronia cooked, and they are a pain to pick. Black currants have a strong taste but I like them as a fresh snack too, and they are truly excellent cooked taste-wise and also as an anti-oxidant to stay healthy. I don't have to strain the seeds and skins for those like Aronia, either, though I blend them up. Clove currants (Crandall) have wafting fragrant yellow flowers in spring and the black berries are very mild and sweet. The only gooseberries I like are Black Velvet, but they are not very productive compared with currants, and none of the currants can compare with Aronia for production and ease of picking.

Raspberries are excellent fruits but do present a problem in spreading too much. My favorite is probably Chilliwack. It is a very large berry and the canes get over 6' tall. Willamette is slightly more flavorful but stays in the 3-4' range and is not as productive.

I do not have a big garden, when I say I'm out in the back forty it means I'm forty steps away from the back door. Like most plantaholics I want one of everything. I have a Raspberry bed that works well in a small garden. Mine is in a slightly raised wooden planter, at each end there is a t-bar a little more than waist high with holes drilled in each end of the two t-bars. Plastic coated clothesline is pulled through the holes and joined with a turnbuckle. We put a spreader bar in the middle between the two t-bars so as not to pull them over when tightening the line. The Raspberrys are planted in a row in the middle of the bed. The new canes are allowed to grow up and are tied to both sides of the spreader bar. After the old canes are finished bearing they are cut out and the new ones are woven around the wire like a french braid. The longer the cane the better, more berries and easy to pick. I picked this method up watching gardening shows on T.V.

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Just tried Goji (aka wolfberry) and love them dried. Taste like craisins. Ordered some seeds and hope they grow, I have to taste these fresh!

Some people seem to have success with Wolfberries. Search threads on the fruit forum. However they have been subjected to a lot of hype as Goji. I've bought them cheap for years from Chinese groceries as Lycium or even as medlar (not the right name). I tried soaking some berries and extracting seed from the fermented pulp, but haven't tried sprouting them yet.

I bought some plants once from a gardening show in the herb section but they died. They are in the tomato (Nightshade) family.

Lycium barbarum grows wild here and there in Seattle, I've also seen it at the beach in Mukilteo.

Hi Grant
I am from near the City of Sakatoon in Sakatchewan where the University is working hard on developing the Blue Honeysuckle as a potential crop for shipping into the Japanese market. They are similar to blueberry in flavour and yet can be tart or otherwise flavoured. It depends which one you got. The sources for these are Russia and some of Europe as well as Japan island of Hokkaido. Yours will likely have been developed by Dr. Maxine Thompson. See the link. You can link to my blog at http://www.aprairiejournal.blogspot.com/. I am looking for seed as I am working on a collection. Did you get 2 for pollination?

Here is a link that might be useful: Home Orchard Society