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Alkekengi
Also called Japanese Lanterns
Chinese lantern (Alkekengi officinarum) is a hardy perennial in the nightshade family, grown mainly for its bright orange papery calyces that enclose the fruit. It spreads by underground roots, so plant it where it can be contained.
Alkekengi is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family Solanaceae with a single species Alkekengi officinarum. This species is native to the regions covering Southern Europe to South Asia and Northeast Asia.
It is commonly known as the bladder cherry, Chinese lantern, Japanese-lantern, strawberry groundcherry, winter cherry, alchechengi berry, or Klabuster cherry.
It is a popular ornamental plant, widely cultivated in temperate regions of the world, and very hardy to below −20 °C (−4 °F). It can be invasive with its wide-spreading root system sending up new shoots some distance from where it was originally planted. In various places around the world, it has escaped from cultivation.
In the United Kingdom it has been given the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Alkekengi by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
