fruit · The Trophy Room
Kousa Dogwood Berry
The secret edible hiding on an ornamental tree. Most people plant the kousa dogwood for its spring flowers and never learn that the strange knobbly pink-red fruits it drops in fall are sweet and good — soft custardy pulp behind a bumpy skin, tasting somewhere between persimmon and mango.
Identifying
- a round, raspberry-pink, bumpy-skinned fruit the size of a big marble, dangling on a long stalk
- inside, soft orange custardy pulp with a few hard seeds
- borne on a small tree famous for its white or pink spring flower bracts
- the pebbly skin is edible but often slipped off for the sweet pulp
Facts
- planted worldwide as an ornamental, its fall fruit almost universally overlooked as food
- the pulp is sweet and tropical-tasting; the grainy skin is the only off-putting part
- birds and squirrels usually harvest the crop before people realize it was edible
