HAWAI'I GARDENS
Miracle berry a natural sweetener
By Heidi Bornhorst
Q. Please tell us more about this "miracle berry." What is its scientific name? Where should I grow it? How long does the sweetness last?
— TT, Kailua
The miracle berry is not hard to grow. The Latin or scientific name is Synsepalum dulcificum. The miracle berry is in the Sapotaceae family, along with other choice edibles like star apple, chicle, sapotes, egg fruit, mamey sapote and many more onolicous fruits.
It is a bush native to West Africa. Africans call it asaba.
It has dark green leaves and clusters of white, five-parted flowers that emerge from the leaf axils. Red berries follow the pollinated flowers. These berries make everything you taste after them sweet.
This can last for a couple of hours. As great and healthy gardeners found, it helps bitter medicinal herbs go down. References show the berries also may be used for chemotherapy patients to improve food taste after treatment, and as a natural sweetener.
Chemical proteins from the crushed fruit coat the sour receptors on the tongue so that everything has a sweet taste.
The plant is slow-growing reaching maybe three feet in five years. This is good for people with small gardens (most of us) or who need to grow plants in pots. The miracle berry is an ideal plant for container culture. It likes to grow in light shade.
Plush, perfect oleanders
Oleanders are a pretty, tough, floriferous plant for Hawai'i gardens.
They come in many colors and are especially handsome in white against the grayish pointed leaves. You see oleander flowers in coral, red and pink.
One of my favorite public treescapes is the airport viaduct. Check out the fully blooming plush pink oleanders which look really good now. On Nimitz there is also a grove of gold trees, officially recognized as "exceptional trees." The giant cement planters are up on the freeway and these contain oleanders and bougainvillaea.
The lower Nimitz highway planting features many choice plants as well as the gold trees. Many different tall and short palms grow including kokotan, and they look great.
What I really like about the design is how plants are featured in bloom at different times of year. The gold trees are often prominent for a short week or two. The palms always look great from both Nimitz and the viaduct. Now the oleanders are impressive. They are of the double-pink variety and all I could think as I drove along was Pink! Plush! Perfect!
Oleander leaves are poisonous.
Poisonous-plant experts say that if you chew on oleander leaves, they are so nasty that the gag reflex will ensure you will never ingest them.
(While eating a handful of leaves will sicken but not kill an adult, one leaf can kill a small child, according to the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo. See http://chemweb.calpoly.edu/chem/bailey/377/PapersSp2000/Sarah.)
Oleanders are available with single or double flowers in many colors at your favorite landscape plant nursery.
Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable landscape consultant. Submit questions at islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.
