Important: Safety Warning
This page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Ground Cherry
Physalis Virginiana. Nightshade Family.
A strong-scented, low, much-branched and spreading herb. Leaves.--Somewhat oblong or heart-shaped; wavy-toothed. Flowers-Greenish or yellowish-white; solitary on nodding flower-stalks. Calyx.--Five-cleft; enlarging and much inflated in fruit, loosely enclosing the berry. Corolla.--Between wheel-shaped and funnel-form. Stamens.--Five; erect; with yellow anthers. Pistil.--One. Fruit.--A green or yellow edible berry which is loosely enveloped in the much-inflated calyx.
We find the ground cherry in light sandy soil, and are more apt to notice the loosely enveloped berry of the late year than the rather inconspicuous flowers which appear in summer.