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Physalis hederifolia
Ivyleaf groundcherry is a low, rhizomatous perennial herb from dry desert and mountain habitats of the southwestern US and northern Mexico, grown mainly as a curiosity or for its inflated lantern fruits. It tolerates poor, dry, rocky ground once established.
Physalis hederifolia is a species of flowering plant in the nightshade family known by the common name ivyleaf groundcherry. It is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, where it can be found in rocky, dry desert and mountain habitat. This is a rhizomatous perennial herb producing a hairy, branching stem 10 to 80 centimeters long. The gray-green oval leaves are 2 to 4 centimeters long and have smooth or bluntly toothed edges. The flowers growing from the leaf axils are bell-shaped and just over a centimeter long. They are yellow with five brown smudges in the throats. The five-lobed calyx of sepals at the base of the flower enlarges as the fruit develops, becoming an inflated, veined nearly spherical structure 2 or 3 centimeters long which contains the berry.
There are several wild varieties of this species.
The Zuni people boil the fruit of the fendleri variety in small quantities of water, crush it and use it as a condiment.
Cutleaf groundcherry · Southwestern groundcherry · Cotztomatl · Strawberry-tomato · Longleaf groundcherry · Physalis nicandroides · Peruvian groundcherry · Tomatillo · Husk Tomato · Husk tomato · Starhair groundcherry · Groundcherry
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Physalis hederifolia 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
