Fruit in Korea

I never reported back on my trip to Korea, mostly, I guess, because I hadn't reported back on anything here in months until very recently. But rest assured that I did go, and I did come back, and I did eat fruit while I was there.

Most of what I encountered was not overly exotic, although I did get to try the bokbunja that was recommended in the comments. This is a wine made from Rubus coreanus the Korean black raspberry. It was tasted about like what you'd expect from a black raspberry wine, but with a more substantial kick than I'd anticipated. (Of course, it was followed immediately by a couple of beers at a noraebang, so that might have had something to do with it). I thought it was pretty good. Apparently it also helps with impotence and sexual stamina, though neither was really an issue on this trip.

We also had hallabong, a relatively expensive but very tasty citrus fruit grown primarily on Jeju Island. It's vaguely tangelo-like, released from a Japanese breeding program in the 1970's (they called it Dekopon, but the Korean ones are named for a mountain on Jeju). I've seen a couple variations, so I'm not 100% confident in the pedigree, but the most probable seems to be:

Hallabong = Kiyomi x Ponkan
Kiyomi = Miyagawa x Trovita
Miyagawa = Citrus unshiu
Trovita = Citrus sinensis
Ponkan = Citrus reticulata

(Citrus unshiu x Citrus sinensis) x Citrus reticulata.

(For those unfamiliar with the Latin binomials, sinensis is the sweet orange, reticulata is mandarin/tangerine, and unshiu is the satsuma or mikan.

Anyway, very good. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of it.

I did however get pictures of jujube (from a street market in Suwon):


And some asian pears, apples, and kumquats:

(I don't know what variety of apples they were, but it seemed to be the same variety everywhere. I had one and it was pretty uninspiring).

And some strawberries (there's also a few oranges and melons hiding in there):

(This seemed to be the only way strawberries were sold in Korea–in big styrofoam boxes. I think these were mostly 'Chandler', but I could be wrong (I'm pretty sure at least the ones I ate were). There were a couple of flats that might have been 'Camarosa' or something like that. They were even more shameless than US strawberry packers in hiding the bad fruit under the good, probably because in an opaque container it's easier to hide).

Also, though not a fruit, I also sampled bundagi, silkworm larvae:

(I sampled some of these later, cooked not fresh, and wasn't too impressed, though my cousin told me the ones we had were not especially good ones...)

It's not as far north, but...

...it's a heck of a lot colder than London:

Don's Cold Hardy Citrus

Granted, they're not looking at grapefruit, but I'm duly impressed with anybody who can get an edible Poncirus hybrid. A very cool site, and a good resource for those interested in breeding cold-hardy citrus.

The site is set up in reverse blog fashion, with the new stuff on the bottom, which I find unreasonably distracting and odd.

(Todd Wert, a friend of mine from grad school, pointed this page out to me).

Also, here's a fun-looking citrus page in German, one of the users' pages from the forum page.

Anyone know of any more northerly grapefruits?

From the Home Citrus Growers site I recently discovered:

World's Northernmost Fruiting Grapefruit? (Home Citrus Growers)

Anybody know of anything further north than London (there's a claim for Porlock, but if you're going to make fruiting a criterion I think you have to actually ripen the fruit)? Really I think the UK is probably the only place with a shot at growing it this far north. I've seen some kind of citrus growing in a greenhouse in Iceland (I can't recall what it was) but I think to count it really has to be outdoors...where's the challenge in growing it in a greenhouse...even if it is an immensely cool greenhouse heated only by infernal depths of the earth.

Bizzarria!

It's not hard to see why they named it "Bizzarria":

The Bizzarria Story (Home Citrus Growers)

I've seen a number chimeral citrus specimens before, but I've never seen the Bizzarria before. Apparently it's a graft hybrid of a sour orange and a citron. (Another much less spectacular citrus graft hybrid, Citrus neo-aurantium, can be seen here.).

This reminds me a little bit of the account of the "Sweet and Sour" apple in Apples of New York. Described as a probable graft hybrid, this apple had ridged fruit, with the ribs green and the space in between yellow. When eaten, the flesh in the green areas is tart and acidic, while that beneath the yellow skin is sweet and sub-acid.

Update: The more I poke around, the more I realize that the Home Citrus Growers website is pretty nifty as a whole. I'll add a link in the sidebar, too.