There is a
gooseberry known as the Flintshire gooseberry. It is, rumour has it,
a prolific cropper: it was born and bred in north-east Wales, around
the Wrexham area, and if you ask anyone around there who knows fruit,
they'll mention it with pride as their local gooseberry.
The trouble is, it may
not even exist.
One man has been
looking for this gooseberry, quite hard, since 2003, and still hasn't
found it. He's Simon Farr, who runs the North East Wales Orchards
Initiative, currently surveying and reviving ancient orchards in
north-east Wales and neighbouring counties in England. Now even he
admits he's beginning to wonder if it's a myth.
'We've gone through the
old catalogues and looked in all sorts of places to find it,' he told
me,' and there's not even a description.'
His orchards survey
already has one high-profile success story when it comes to finding
obscure fruit: the Denbigh Plum, first mentioned in 1785 and believed
to be the only surviving native Welsh plum, was almost extinct a few
years ago. Then its plight was highlighted by the project, and caught
the attention of a chap called Ian Sturrock.
Ian has a good pedigree
on saving rare fruit: he's responsible for rescuing the Bardsey
Apple, the last tree of which was found growing on an island off the
north coast of Wales. Much grafting later and you can even buy one to grow in your garden; and so it is with the Denbigh Plum. In fact so
complete is this fruit's return from obscurity that it now has its own festival.
Not so the Flintshire
gooseberry, though. Simon says almost everyone in the area can tell
you about it: if it is a myth, it's certainly a persistent one. Some
even remember having a Flintshire gooseberry in their gardens, or
their parents' gardens. What's worse, all they can tell you is that
it was a prolific cropper: no word about what it looked like, or even
if it was a green or a purple variety.
Simon thinks it might
just be a chance seedling from a wild gooseberry, found commonly in
the hedgerows here: they're also reported growing further afield,
too, in the Lake District and Northumberland.
Wild gooseberries are
small, the size of marbles (the Plants for a Future database has
them at 1cm diameter), and also rather hairy and can be sharp to the
taste (though if you can find the plum red ones, they're much sweeter
– if you beat the wasps to it).
There's a fair bit of
debate over whether these hedgerow gooseberries are truly wild, or
just garden escapees. There's no particular reason why Ribes
uva-crispa shouldn't be a wilding: it grows perfectly well in most
temperate woodland settings, and there's a long and honourable
tradition of wild gooseberries in America, though they're different
species: there's Ribes oxyacanthoides, the bristly wild gooseberry;
R. cynosbati, the prickly gooseberry; and with no small relief R.
hirtellum, which is merely a bit hairy.
And there is a wealth
of common names for gooseberries – 26 of them, grossetts,
feaberries, goosegogs... – which hints at a long history. They've
been eaten since the 13th century and grown in gardens
since the 16th century, although it was (isn't it always)
the Victorians who really shook things up in the gooseberry world by
breeding many of the best-loved varieties we grow today.
But those who argue
that the hedgerow plants are from the garden point out that they
weren't recorded in the wild till 1763 – long after it was grown in
cultivation. And there's an argument that they aren't British native
plants after all: the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI)
certainly takes this view, pointing out that the spread of the wild
gooseberry has happened since they became popular in gardens. But you
can always argue the toss on native status, especially in this case.
Anyway, back to the
Flintshire gooseberry: poor Simon is still on the hunt for it, and
regularly follows up leads such as the old market gardens in Rhyll
said to have a healthy population of Flintshire gooseberries which
turned out to be a fine but nonetheless inescapably English
collection of old varieties.
So have you seen this
gooseberry? If you think you might have it growing in your garden –
the North East Wales Orchard Initiative would like to hear from you.
2 comments:
I remember picking red gooseberries on a country lane near Usk in the summer of 1977. There were cottages further up the road, but not close enough by for them to have been part of their gardens. So either it was the remnant of a long demolished cottage garden or it was a wilding.
And it was the sweetest goosegog I'd ever tasted.
What is it about semi-wild cottage gardens that brings out the romantic in all of us... I think I'd like your gooseberry to be a wilding whether it is or not :D
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