my new pet: miracle fruit plant

(photo courtesy of wikipedia)

i woke up to a pleasant surprise today. my miracle fruit plant arrived from jene's tropicals in st. petersburg, FL.

i first heard about these miracle berries from my friend in cambridge. he told me about a miracle berry party that his friends threw that was so much fun. eating the flesh of the berry will change your tastebuds for 30 mins to an hour and cause sour and bitter foods to taste sweet. after one of these babies, you can eat a lemon whole and it will taste sweet like lemonade. i've also heard that cheap tequila will actually taste good. dark stout beers may even taste like chocolate milkshakes. watch this NYT video and you'll get the idea.

the NYT recently wrote an article on these trippy berries and now the wait time to get ahold of them is 6 weeks to two months. each berry will cost you $1.50 to $4 and shipping costs are as high as $30 per order. the fruit are highly perishable and must be overnighted. most of the stuff available in the US is being grown in FL. it's ironic that it was faster for me to receive a whole plant than the actual berries themselves. from seed to fruit, it usually takes 4-5 years before a plant is bearing fruit; i'm hoping it will only be a matter of months before my new plant is.

so my plant is a lot smaller than i thought it would be. i ordered the 3 gallon size and expected the plant to be at least 4 ft tall. my plant is 1 ft tall from the topsoil. i am notoriously bad with plants, but this baby wasn't cheap. cost more than what i paid for both my cats together (they were rescues). i think i need to treat it is as if it were my new pet. first of all, let's call her a girl and shall i give her a name? it will need to be fed and talked to and nurtured every day. i will be very proud of myself if i can actually get this thing to bear me some fruit. it will make dinner parties at my house a lot more interesting...


in the meantime, i have 50 berries on order to arrive on a specified date in july for a "flavor tripping" party for the houston chowhounds. planning is taking place right now but the location of the event will be in a bar in montrose.

okay. any suggestions on names for my new green pet?