Black wolfberry

Photo: Yuriy75 — CC BY 3.0 · source

Survives zone 5 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

The black cousin of the more familiar red goji berry (L. barbarum), colored by an exceptionally high concentration of anthocyanins rather than the carotenoids that make red goji red. Sold dried as "black goji" and steeped for a color-changing tea (purple in acidic water, blue in alkaline).

Hardiness

Zone 5–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Aug–Oct

Mature size

0.9–1.8 m tall and wide, spiny

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.5–8.5 (neutral to strongly alkaline), tolerates salt

Environment

Arid, saline-alkali desert

Native range

Central Asia and northwestern China — Qinghai, Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia and neighboring regions of Mongolia and Central Asia — saline desert flats, alkaline soils and gravelly wasteland.

Status

Wild and increasingly cultivated

Years to fruit

1–2 years

Growth speed

Moderate — slower and denser than the red gojis, and very thorny with it

Spacing

150 cm (59 in) apart — about 2.3 m² (24 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Narrow, linear to lance-shaped, 1.5–5 cm, fleshy

Root system

Deep, tough and salt-tolerant, with spreading laterals that bind loose saline sand — the plant is used for exactly that purpose in desert stabilisation work in north-west China.

Fruit description

Small round berries, 5–10 mm, deep purple-black, juicy

Propagation

Seed (no pretreatment needed), or semi-hardwood cuttings in summer.

Pollination

Self-fertile.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.