Perennial Groundcherries

[agrorev]

I know there are some perennial Physalis but haven't grown them.  Has anyone investigated crosses within Physalis?

[nicolas]

A perennial big fruited with a good state would be great. I've never grown Physalis spp. yet.

From Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier :



Maybe some info in, didint watch :

Untangling Physalis (Solanaceae) from the Physaloids: A Two-Gene Phylogeny of the Physalinae

[khoomeizhi]

i've grown at least 6 species of physalis, 3 of them perennial. a couple of the perennials have some merit on their own, though better production/shorter season/size would be things worth breeding/selecting for. have tried lot of different crosses, mostly last year, but unfortunately couldn't see any evidence of actual crossing in the F1. will keep trying.

[nicolas]

There is hope on the front of interspecific physalis cross :

www.facebook.com/groups/PlantBreedingForPermaculture/permalink/344777619019211/

From Graham:

I don't want to jinx myself here, but I look to have 6 successful pollinations on Physalis peruviana using P. heterophylla pollen (they are marked with a thick red line underneath).

[Graham]

The next hurdle having at least produced some seed is the one khoomeizhi has faced. Is it actually hybrid seed. We'll have to wait till next spring to answer that question though.

khoomeizhi, out of curiosity. Which species have you worked with?

[papabearjay]

Physalis sp. are notorious for self-incompatibility issues. Unless you have a large gene-pool to start with, I imagine this issue might be an impeding factor.

[darrenabbey]

What I've read about the incompatibility system suggests it is activated about the time the flower opens. Because of this, it can be overcome by performing bud-pollination. With this, you apply mature pollen to the stigma of a flower before it has opened. I've read about the technique being used in other species, but haven't heard about it in Physalis specifically.

[khoomeizhi]

^this is basically the technique i used. the pollen starts loosening up pretty quickly once the flowers open, so the mothers in the crosses i did were all flowerbuds that looked to open soonish but hadn't yet.

regarding the species i've played with (note: i've heard from a few sources that 1 or 2 are assumed to be incompatible with most of the others, and that i'm not 100% on some of the IDs): P. pruinosa, P. peruviana, P. ixocarpa, P. heterophylla, one sold by oikos as P. longifolia subglabrata (and a local one that's nearly identical), and one i haven't managed to ID at all that i received from trixtrax chris in washington.

just a few new crosses that seemed to work from this year to try out next...

[Steve]

So Graham, What did you get from those seeds of the possible cross between P. peruviana x P. heterophylla? Was it a true hybrid and fertile? Those two species are in the same section of Physalis, I think. ?.

And Khoomeizhi, you mentioned on a forum finding a wild really good tropical tasting green fruited kind with a slight purple blush. Could that have been P. angulata? Any luck with growing or crossing with that one?

[Steve]

Graham, according to Menzel, P. peruviana is tetraploid and P. heterophylla is diploid, so they should not be compatible (her own crosses did not work), unless you happened to get triploids. But then I would think they would be sterile and not produce seeds at all. Accidental self-pollination by P. peruviana seems a possible mechanism here.

[Kopar]

I've grown Physalis alkekengi (from Baker Creek), and while it did prove to be a perennial, it didn't prosper in my garden, and it didn't grow any fruit. That's strange since I hear it grows wild in the area without problems (maybe Baker Creek's version just isn't acclimatized). It did get flowers the second year, though (I think in the spring). I think I killed it after that when we transplanted everything in its raised bed somewhere else.

I've also grown what was supposed to be Physalis heterophylla Nees (Ammon Martin's ground cherry from amishlandseeds.com), but it didn't seem to be a perennial, but rather probably the same species as Goldie and Aunt Molly's. However, it did seem to have better flavor, production and a larger size than most ground cherries I had tried up to that point (Goldie was the only one I preferred for taste, but it had smaller fruit). I tried a bunch more ground cherry varieties in 2017, but they didn't do so well where I had them (so, I can't really compare them to the ones I tried before that point).

I haven't found any obvious crosses between any ground cherries (let alone perennials), yet. However, I have found an Ammon Martin's ground cherry (one fruit) that had a conical shape like a Christmas tree! I don't remember if I still have the seeds, but I do remember that the fruit was smaller than the ones with the regular ground cherry shape.

Ground cherries reseed easily enough (and the annual ones fruit well enough) that I haven't been putting as much effort into finding perennial ones as I used to do.