Unusual & Old Fashioned Fruit Trees

 The Pepino or Melon Pear – Solanum Muricatum.

The Pepino or Melon Pear is very like a tiny melon that has been grown to individual portion size. They do have a softer skin than a normal Melon that is a bit chewy and a little striped, but edible and unlike a Melon they don’t have big pips. They are very sweet and in a blind taste test anybody would think that they were just another variety of Melon. Fruits are occasionally available in supermarkets and plants can sometimes be seen on sale in garden centres in the boxes of “Exotic specials,” that include things like Passion Flowers and Bougainvilleas which are periodically offered for sale.

Originally a native of South America, the Pepino is grown in many of the warmer countries all over the World now with many cultivars in existence. Closely related to tomatoes, potatoes and peppers, the Pepino is in fact a small, perennial evergreen shrub that should grow for years, but they are not easy to keep over winter here in the UK, as they don’t like the cold. In theory they should be no harder to grow than a Citrus plant and they will happily grow from seed, but they do need the warmth of a greenhouse, especially in Winter. Growing only a few feet in height, they should not get too big, or be too difficult fruit inside a greenhouse either.