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There are some annuals with showy fruits and among them none is so much admired as the Chinese Lantern plant, which produces large, inflated, orange-red, lantern-like pods containing small, fleshy fruits much like Tomatoes. The flowers are inconspicuous, being borne in the axils of the leaves, and it is after the leaves have fallen that the fruit is most showy. […]
From the Greek physa, a bladder, an allusion to the inflated calyx (Solanaceae). A genus of 100 or more species of which the two most well-known are P. alkekengi, the Bladder Cherry or Chinese Lantern Plant, with its brilliant, flame-coloured, air-filled calyces, and P. peruviana, the Cape Gooseberry, which is a greenhouse species. They are annual and perennial herbaceous plants, […]