Now I grow some in pots and some in the ground just in case we have an early frost. They do so much better in potting soil but the plants get huge and top heavy.

The fruit is ripe when the tiny hairs brush off easily.

If the fruit is too sour for you, try cooking it with a bit of sugar - it can take on a whole new flavor, sort of like mango mixed with vanilla custard.

In Colombia they tend to only consume this fruit as a juice but in other parts of Latin America they use it a million different ways.

Different species make up the group - Naranjila, Cocona, and Lulo - all of them can cross breed and are deliberately mixed in some parts of South America. Some varieties have more spines and some have less, some have more purple color to the stems and leaves where others are more green.

Lulo has larger fruit and a distinct tangerine flavor. It does best in cool temps with high humidity (like the mountains of Colombia). I grow it in the shade here in Raleigh NC.

Cocona has slightly larger than a golf ball sized fruit, and some forms have pear shaped fruits, they can be purple, red, yellow or orange and there are some seedless forms (really low seeded forms). They do better in hot summer weather around here and they can usually handle the first few mild frosts of winter. The flavor is mostly sour but they make a great juice and cooked they taste exceptional. They are more popular in Peru and Ecuador.

10-15 years ago someone imported a bunch of these plants or seeds and they hit the ornamental trade as 'Bed-o-nails' plants. No one knew they made edible fruit. Most of them would best be classified as Naranjila but they could also be a mixture of species. They tended to taste pretty blah - kind of like an uncooked yellow squash with a touch of lemon.

I love the look of this group of plants, even tho the spines are pain to deal with. They do well for me but I doubt anyone would want to grow them commercially here - they only fruit in the fall whereas in South America they fruit year round.