In message , Sacha
writes
On 29/11/07 18:14, in article , "Russel
Sprout" wrote:


"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
I was given this tonight by someone who lives in Westbury on Trym. She has
seen these fruits growing on a bush (not a tree) in a garden and picked
two
up off the road. They smell very faintly citrusy to me and each seed
chamber has two seeds in each side. She's not a gardener so can only tell
me that the leaves are leaf shaped, not huge, not leathery and that the
fruits are autumnal.
http://i16.tinypic.com/7x8rupj.jpg

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

I'd suggest Hodgsonia Macrocarpa, I don't know if there are any coomon
names. Probably worth googling it.


It's extraordinarily like it but H. macrocarpa is waaaay too big. The
Bristol fruits are about the size of a chestnut. What size are the fruits
of H. heteroclita, do you happen to know? Or are they the same plant under
different names?

There seems to some debate as to whether there is one of two species.
Wikipedia has H. macrocarpa as the southern form, and H. heteroclita as
the northern form. Some other sources give them as synonyms.

Even the northern form might not be hardy in Britain. Apart from the
size of the fruit (8" diam, 4-6" long in H. heteroclita), the plants are
woody climbers, not bushes, the leaves are 3 or more commonly 5-lobed,
and the flowers have long tendrils extending from the petals. I also
suspect that the seeds don't match - pictures look as if individual
seeds (6 in total) fill cavities in fruit pulp.

http://hua.huh.harvard.edu/china/mss...-MO_coauthorin
gFeb2007.htm

(It might be worth showing your fruits bisected vertically, rather than
horizontally, as this may help confirm that they are pomes.)

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley