Heteromeles

Heteromeles
Toyon bush in habitat
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Rosids
Order:	Rosales
Family:	Rosaceae
Subfamily:	Amygdaloideae
Tribe:	Maleae
Subtribe:	Malinae
Genus:	Heteromeles M.Roem. nom. cons. 1847
Species:	H. arbutifolia
Binomial name
Heteromeles arbutifolia (Lindl.) M.Roem.
Natural range
Synonyms
Photinia arbutifolia Lindl. Crataegus arbutifolia W.T.Aiton nom. illeg. Heteromeles fremontiana Decaisne Heteromeles salicifolia (C.Presl) Abrams Photinia salicifolia C.Presl

Finally got around to trying the fruit of Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia). Unrelated to holly, it has bright red berries in the winter and sort of looks like holly, so it's called "California holly" and indeed is the plant Hollywood is named after.

The fruit are not botanical berries but actually pomes, like tiny apples (which are one of their closest relatives).

If you eat a fresh, bright red berry it won't hurt you, but you'll immediately want to spit it out because it's incredibly astringent. But if you look past the astringency you can taste how it might have a good flavor if correctly processed.

Initially I thought it would take cooking (such as boiling) to remove the astringency, but I dehydrated some over night and now they're delicious! Like a dry "sour apple" candy, they're not actually that sour but they have a tart, intense flavor like a dried apple or cherry.

I guess they're like manzanita berries in that the texture is dry and powdery, paradoxically they have a thirst-quenching juiciness.

Acknowledgements

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Heteromeles, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.