A Cultivated Appreciation

Day 346: If you were of a mind to do so, how do you know when an Akebia fruit is ready to eat? Easy! It splits longitudinally to reveal the mass of pulp and seeds inside. Two of mine were ready to eat by yesterday afternoon, so I had them for a before-dinner snack. Even though both of them had come from the same "hand" (cluster of fruits on a single stem), one was sweeter than the other. In either case, it is only a light sweetness, perhaps equal to that of one teaspoon of sugar dissolved in eight ounces of water, certainly not like a sweet drink or candy. Is there a flavour to it? Again, it is almost imperceptible, more like a slight scent than an actual taste. Yes, eating Akebia fruits requires a cultivated appreciation, but I look forward to this harvest every year now.

Tickling Time

Day 196: As I came out of the garage yesterday, a waft of sweet fragrance alerted me to the fact that the Akebia vines have started blooming. A quick assessment showed that not only were the white male flowers ready to contribute pollen, the purple females were ready to accept it. I made a quick trip into the house, grabbed the camel-hair brush I use for botanical matchmaking, and went back out to tickle stamens and pistils so that I can have a handful..."handful," I said!...of Akebia fruits to enjoy in the fall. Even though I tried last year not to get too carried away, my cross-pollination efforts wound up creating more than I could reasonably eat. It's possible that a breeze or bugs contributed to the abundance, but as a general rule here in the Pacific Northwest, these plants require human assistance in order to fruit. This year, I had the great good sense to only pollinate flowers which were in easy reach. No more climbing the ladder to get that one last Akebia which, in any event, are an acquired taste.

Matchmaker To Akebia

Day 197: They had me worried! The white Akebia vine was blooming profusely, producing lots of pollen with nowhere to go. The purple vine...the bearer of fertile female flowers...wasn't doing so well. I'd pruned both back radically last fall when the trellis collapsed, and the purple one hadn't taken well to the haircut. It was only showing a few male flowers last week and, as you may recall, the cross must be made with pollen from the white vine's male flowers to the females of the purple. It doesn't work the other way around, as my experiments have shown. Last night, I discovered a few receptive female blooms, and dashed into the house to get my horticultural paintbrush. Okay, Akebia fruits are pretty strange and certainly not to everyone's taste, but they are secondary to the fun I get from cross-pollinating. That said, I vowed that this year, I wouldn't go overboard, limiting myself to no more than a dozen potential Akebia pods at full ripeness.

Strange Fruits

Day 349: If you think back, you may recall that in late May, I was out in the garden with my little paintbrush, tickling pollen from one Akebia vine and transferring it to another. Here are the results of that horticultural exercise. If you've ever tried to eat an Akebia fruit, you might be wondering why I bother. Well, the primary reason would have to be the oft-cited "because I can." Secondary to that is the fact that I've trained my taste buds to enjoy the subtly sweet flavour of this nearly impossible-to-eat fruit. It took a few years of repeated exposure. The pulp holds quite close to those myriad black seeds, and the only way to get it off is to put a spoonful in your mouth, squish the mass with your tongue until the soft parts semi-liquify, and then remove the slippery seeds from your mouth before swallowing. You wouldn't want Akebia vines growing out of your ears now, would you?

Staying Within Reasonable Bounds

Day 325: Late last fall, the trellis supporting the white-flowered Akebia vine broke about halfway up the wall. I figured it was as good a time as any to prune back the vine to a reasonable height. The white one is my pollinator. I have been unable to get it to set fruit, although whether the problem lies with it or with the male flowers of the purple vine is uncertain. The purple males produce very little pollen, and it can be assumed that what they do produce is infertile, but in any event, transferring pollen from the white male flowers to the purple females works. That said, the vines of either are very vigorous. Pruning them to stay within reasonable bounds makes harvesting the peculiar fruits of this particular horticultural labour much easier.

Matchmaking

Day 219: Ah, the matchmaking season has begun...in the horticultural sense, you understand. I've learned over the years that the two Akebia vines are only compatible when the females are purple and the males are white, so with a soft camel-hair paintbrush, I tease pollen from the anthers and transfer it to receptive stigmata, as evidenced by tiny drops of sticky secretion at the tips. This year, I improved on the system by first gathering the pollen into a tiny container (the bottom of an insect-magnifier box) rather than trying to carry it from one plant to the other on the brush. Last year, I got a little carried away and wound up with more Akebia fruits than I really wanted to eat (over 40!), so this year, I'm being a little more judicious with my hand pollination. While Akebia fruits aren't to most peoples' tastes, I rather enjoy having a few...operative word there: "few." A dozen will do nicely, thank you, and I may have already exceeded that number if all my attempts succeed. There does come a point, however, when matchmaking can become too fruitful (ahem!), no matter how much fun it is to pair up the boys and girls.

Half The Haul

Day 356: Even as I write, I am enjoying one of the most bizarre fruits in my garden. This is but half the haul from my carefully hand-pollinated Five-Leaf Akebia vines. I have mentioned before that one must acquire a taste for this comestible, and in fact it took me several years to train myself in what, precisely, there was to appreciate from a fruit comprised mostly of hard, large seeds. The handful of friends I've tried to instruct in consuming them have not had my patience or persistence in learning to eat something well outside the norm for Western palates. In other words, I couldn't talk anybody into seconds. Too bad! That just means more for me. This year's crop is exceptionally sweet, and I am not quite sure if that's because my taste buds have become sensitized or because I didn't water the vines and simply let them grow unattended through what was a very dry summer. That said, when the pods ripen and split to indicate that they are ready to pick, they seem to do so all at once. I managed to get through about 50 last year without wasting a one, but this year, I was more conservative in the number of flowers I pollinated.

Match-making

Day 202: It's time for me to play match-maker for the Akebia vines again. Experience has taught me that the purple male flowers do not produce viable pollen, so the cross must be made between white males and purple females if there is to be a crop of fruit, and even though the two vines are now intertwined to some degree, the downward-facing flowers will undoubtedly always require some pollination assistance on my part. To that end, I was up the ladder with an artist's round sable paintbrush a few days ago, tickling pollen from the anthers of mature white flowers and transferring it to the stigmata (receptive tips) of the purple ones. In the close-up photo, you can see where the pollen has adhered to the sticky substance of the receptive stigmata. In theory (and usually in practice), each one of these will develop a fruit roughly four inches long and about an inch and a quarter in diameter. They're not the easiest things in the world to eat, but I have developed a liking for the mildly sweet taste of the pulp. That said, I have been unable to find any recipes which use it, so I eat it straight from the pod.

Akebia Abundance

Day 349: I think I let this experiment get away from me just a little bit, although I must say that my skill at hand-pollination is much improved over my early attempts. Here you see 21 Akebia fruits, each four to six inches long, chock-full of seeds and to a significantly lesser extent, a mildly sweet pulp which is very difficult to separate from them. The best procedure I have found is to put a teaspoon-sized mass on your tongue, roll it around until your saliva loosens the pulp, swallow it, being careful not to ingest any of the seeds which can then be spit into an empty rind for disposal. Ten more pods preceded these, and there are at least ten more still ripening on the vine. A slightly sweeter taste can be achieved by refrigerating the pods for a day or two before eating, but do not wait too long. They do not hold well once they have been picked. I probably won't be able to stay ahead of the crop at a consumption rate of 3-4 per day.

Odd And Edible

Day 341: The first of the Akebia pods split yesterday, and I had promised to bring you the details regarding their consumption, so here we go. First of all, let it be known that this is a challenging fruit to eat. Only the viscid, gooey mass in the middle is edible raw, and although purportedly the rind can be sliced and stir-fried, I would not recommended it. I tried it, and found it bitter and rather nasty. As you can see, the core "caterpillar" contains hundreds of large black seeds. They cling tenaciously to the surrounding white bits and cannot be removed without losing much of the volume of the edible part. The solution is to pop a portion of the "slug" into your mouth and roll it around with your tongue until the white part semi-liquifies. Then you can spit out the seeds into the handy disposable rind. The question you are no doubt asking at this point is whether or not it's worth the effort, and I have to reply by saying, "Probably not unless you're into weird foods." It took me several years to acquire a taste for this unusual fruit which, if the truth be told, is almost flavourless but mildly sweet. It might be compared to rice candy, but in a seed-filled and slimy form. That said, my hand-pollinating has yielded up about thirty pods for me to enjoy over then next couple of weeks if the rain hasn't ruined them.

Horticulture At Work

Day 334: Readers may recall a post or two from last spring when I was hand-pollinating my Akebia vine. I got a little carried away with the endeavour, easy to do when one has had prior success, and easy to forget that these unusual fruits demand that you acquire a taste for them (something of a long process!) and are rather difficult to eat. The pods change from green to yellowish (right), and then take on a pale lavender tinge, opening along the lengthwise "seam." In a few days when they split to expose their seedy pulp (the signal that they are fully ripe), I will publish another photo and details regarding their consumption. There are 30-40 fruits on the vine, more than I can reasonably consume. This is what you get for taking horticulture to the next level.

Mating Season

Day 196: Mating season has begun, and yesterday, a few introductions were made with the aid of a Q-tip. The suggestion came from a friend who thought it might work better than the paintbrush I'd been using, and indeed I think it did. More pollen adhered to the cotton, and although the transfer percentage rate was substantially lower, it only takes a few grains to do the trick. I'm sure the neighbours' eyebrows were raised as they watched my antics. The only female flowers currently open are at the very top of the purple vine, and the only way I could reach them was from a ladder. I have never been successful in fertilizing the white Akebia from the purple one (the purple males don't seem to produce viable pollen), the purple females produced 17 fruits last year when pollinated by the white. In order to bear fruit, two different varieties of Akebia quinata are required and hand-pollination is almost mandatory, so if you see me up the ladder with a swabstick in hand, I'm just matchmaking for some rather shy botanicals.

An Acquired Taste

Day 355: This marks the fourth year my Akebia vines have borne fruit as a result of hand-pollination. I have only been successful in fertilizing the purple-flowered female from the white-flowered male, although this spring I thought I might have succeeded in going the other direction. However, the ovaries of the white-flowered vine only swelled slightly and then dropped, leading me to conclude that one or the other (male or female) is sterile. My success gave rise to an even greater puzzle: what to do with the fruit itself. Purportedly edible and even enjoyed by the Japanese, the "sea-slug" in the interior of the pod is a mass of sizeable black seeds surrounded by a thin translucent white goo. To eat an Akebia, you scoop out the slug, pop a portion of it in your mouth, roll it around with your tongue to get the sticky bits off the seeds, and at that point, you can spit the seeds back into the rind for easy disposal. You might be left wondering why you'd bothered. Each year, I've dutifully experimented with eating the fruit and until today, dismissed it as a pointless venture, but when I brought in the pod which had split overnight, I found it rather sweet and enjoyable. Perhaps it was because this pod was perfectly ripe, neither too green nor too mature, or perhaps I have finally acquired a taste for Akebia fruit. I'm looking forward to the next one, and there are 14 yet to come.

Five-Leaf Akebia Fruit

Day 279: The fruit of the Five-Leaf Akebia (Akebia quinata) is an odd-looking thing, and as far as I've been able to determine by reading and experimentation, entirely without gustatory merit. So why do I cross-pollinate my two vines every year? Because I can. Earlier this year, I reported that I thought I had been successful in fertilizing white female flowers with pollen from the purple males. Regrettably, the pods which began to form dropped before they reached the diameter of a pencil. Theoretically, the transfer should work that direction, but to date, the only plant to set fruit has been the purple one, and that only after I had hand-pollinated it with the white. Still, we take our successes where we find them, and in another corner of the garden, the kiwis have declined to be "self-fertile," also starting to set fruit, only to drop it before the berries began to swell. In contrast to the Akebia, kiwis are a crop I wish to successfully cultivate for the table. I may have to plant a pair (male and female) of a different "hardy" variety.