Arbutus Species, Killarney Strawberry Tree, Western Strawberry Tree

This is an evergreen shade tree in my zone 8a garden, as well as a privacy screen. It is very attractive with rugged bark, knarly limbs,...Read More dark green foliage, cute little blueberry type of blooms and green, yellow, orange and red fruit. It has blooms and fruit on the tree at the same time and nearly throughout the year. I planted it around 25 years ago. It impresses me more as each year passes. Birds and hummingbirds love this tree.

Initially it seemed to be shallow rooted, because the wind knocked it down a couple of times, but it was small enough that I could hold it up while placing some heavy pieces of broken concrete on top of where the roots pulled out of the ground and that has held it upright ever since. I planted a few small plants that prefer to be dry under the tree, and it looks like a rock garden.

If the fruit is picked from the tree, it is not sweet. If the fruit is picked up off the ground, it is delicious. The sweetest are the most red berries. The fruit starts fermenting while on the tree, and is only tasty when it falls off. They often split when they hit the ground, obviously due to impact. Regardless of how perfect the berry looks when you pick it up, it will collapse between your fingers. Harvesting requires a really light touch.

The critters will eat the berries completely, not like they do with other types of fruit, by only eating a portion. There has been at least one drunk bird falling out of the tree every year, but they eventually fly back up into the tree after trying a few times. I've never eaten enough berries to feel the effects of fermentation.

This tree has grown well in my garden in Worcestershire U.K.it has reached 6m and its fruits a so pretty.I want to try and propagate fro...Read Morem the tree so will try seeds and hard wood cuttings in the summer.

I have much experience with unusual edibles and that is what spurred me to try the fruits of this tree. Even though many people cite the ...Read More"unedo" of the botanical name as meaning "eat one" and therefore it must have a bad taste I have to disagree. Eating fully ripe fruit has been a fantastic experience and I'd say I'd eat them over commercial strawberries (not alpine or musk though), blueberries, rasp- or blackberries, and many others.
When fully ripe they are a deep, shiny red and are very soft. If they are not soft to the point of being hard to keep the fruit together when pulling it off the branch it is not fully ripe. Heat may help develop full flavor as my experience has been on landscape plants at Mesa College in San Diego, CA, USA.
~Tynan Wyatt

Where I live, NE Spain, the Strawberry Tree is a native. Here the most frequent colour in flowers is a pale yellow. I grow one in a big...Read More container on my balcony. Every year I get a crop of round red berries that taste better than those found in the wild, I ignore the reason why. What I know for sure is that they become much more pallatable if left to over-ripe.