REVISITING THE MIRACLE FRUIT
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Synsepalum dulcificum
FAMILY: Sapotaceae
If you've been involved with rare fruit for very long, you have likely heard of a special little berry that has the power to sweeten the sourest citrus without a grain of sugar. If you are like most members of the RFCI, it's very likely that you have a plant of this miraculous berry for your own enjoyment and to befuddle visitors to your fruit collection. It's time once again to pay a brief visit to this African native, especially for the benefit of our newer reader/members.
A few comments from RFCI founder William F. Whitman are always in order, especially on behalf of the miracle fruit, scientifically known as Synsepalum dulcificum. As with many rare fruits, Bill was a pioneer in the introduction of miracle fruit into the United States, discovering it in the Plant Introduction Station in Panama in the early 1950s and bringing seeds north to his Bal Harbour grove. As to size of the miracle fruit, Bill writes: "In Africa where it is indigenous, it reaches a height of 18 feet. The large one in my Bal Harbour grove is 16 feet with a ten foot spread." Bill's tree frequently yields a pail just about full of fruits. Young plants will bear most heavily in winter, but Bill's mature trees can be counted on to have a few fruit year-round.
This member of the Sapotaceae prefers an acid soil, which can be a problem in South Florida's calcareous soils. Hence, try container growing, for which it is ideally suited, as it usually fruits when 18 to 24 inches tall. Bill had a "freak seedling" which bore when seven inches high! To achieve the largest and juiciest fruit, the plant requires lots of water. Under dry conditions you can expect one-third-size fruit with a thin layer of skin surrounding a small seed with no pulp."
It takes but one miracle fruit to obtain the taste-twisting effect, which lasts about two hours in most people. Simply pop the jelly-bean-sized red berry into your mouth, and chew off the pulp (save the seed to plant!) while making sure your tongue is coated by this almost-tasteless white flesh. This allows the harmless glycoprotein responsible for the effect to do its magic. Then, bite into any sour fruit to find it miraculously sweet! If your loquats are sour, if you'd like to make lemon pie without sugar, or to skip the sugar on the morning grapefruit, miracle fruit is your plant.
While the effect is natural, it is also natural to question the safety of miracle fruit. Let's ask the experts ... so here's Bill again: "On occasion, I have cleaned the pulp off over one hundred seeds. To achieve this, the seeds were put in my mouth and masticated until all traces of flesh were removed from the seeds, being careful not to bite into or injure the seeds. This was done non-stop from the first seed to the last without any ill effects, as far as I am aware of, to my health." Bill has been eating lots of miracle fruit for about forty years now, and is just about the liveliest octogenarian I know!
When cancer struck Ed Kraujalis, "The Mangosteen Man" found miracle fruit to be a godsend while he was undergoing chemotherapy. The chemicals involved in chemo destroyed his sense of taste. He reported that eating miracle fruit allowed him to recover his appetite so that he was able to eat and rebuild his strength.
There have also been questions about propagating this fruit; its growth from seed is so rapid if conditions are met (and how can you not plant the seed after eating the fruit?) that seedlings are the norm. To continue on a superior clone such as Bill's, however, it is possible to propagate cuttings. There are mixed reports here: Bill has had cuttings fruit earlier, "when one only three inches high had a single fruit"; but when Robert Barnum of Possum Trot Nursery rooted cuttings under mist, according to Maurice Kong, they were lopsided, never really establishing a central leader with stratified branches."
However you grow it - seedling, cutting, container, or in the ground - no RFCI member should be without a miracle fruit to complete his or her collection.
DATE: November 1997
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