Che Fruit

The self fertile grafted Che fruit tree in a rare find. Normally they are either male or female. Known botanically as Maclura tricuspidata, is a tough as nails mulberry relative from East Asian mountain forests that works well for a suburban food forest in Perth Metro and cooler climates.

Going with a grafted tree means you bypass the painful ten year wait from seed, getting seedless fruit in just two to three years while completely dodging the aggressive root suckers that wild trees use to invade your lawn.

It grows as a slow, compact shrub you can easily prune to a handy two to four metres tall, though you need to watch out for the young branches because they pack hidden two centimetre thorns that eventually disappear on older wood. Before dropping its leaves for winter, the foliage puts on a pretty show by turning bright golden yellow.

This tree is definitely not "pretentious" when it comes to garden care. When over 2m it loves a full sun spot in well draining sandy loam with a pH between 6- 6.5, handling freezing cold and heavy drought like a absolute champ once settled.

Just do not let it get bogged down because it hates flooding, and make sure to give it a deep soaking every week during dry summer spells so it does not get stressed and drop its crop early.

Because it only sets fruit on fresh current season wood, you need to give it a heavy winter hack while it is dormant by cutting last year growth back by half to force a massive flush of new fruiting wood.

Throw down a balanced fertiliser with trace elements like iron and zinc in spring till early autumn but stop after May so you do not force soft new growth right before the cold hits.

The berry payoff comes during a long autumn harvest with a massive crop of bumpy, maroon red fruits that look like a cross between a mulberry and a lychee.

Patiently leave fruits on the tree until they are completely soft and dead ripe, because if you have to yank them or if the stem bleeds milky white sap, they will taste completely bland. When they are ready, they pop off with a gentle pull, the sap stops, and you get a juicy red flesh with a chewy strawberry texture and a sweet flavour that tastes like a mix of watermelon, melon, and a rather rich fig.

Eat them fresh, toss them into salads, or ferment them into a fruit wine, but just keep them away from cars, driveways and paths unless you want these permanently stained.

Beyond the delicious fruit, the tree has a massive history with fossil records dating back to the Eocene of France, its leaves were used as a backup snack for silkworms, the wood made top tier archery bows, and the roots pack a serious medicinal punch loaded with natural antioxidants like Achilleol A to fight inflammation.

Grafted on mock orange is most common, also possible to grow from cutting.