Suttons are offering a new plant exclusively by mail order – the Pinkberry, which they’re calling the ‘pink lemonade plant’. There’s no photo on the website yet, but in the one I have seen it look just like a pink blueberry, and is likely to need the same kind of conditions (i.e. ericaceous soil or compost, a sunny spot and plenty of water). There’s no mention in the blurb of needing to have more than one plant for pollination, so I assume it’s self-fertile.
What the blurb does say is that the pinkberry has the classic Vaccinium white bell-shaped flowers in the spring, and that these are followed by heavy crops of translucent white berries that ripen through green to bright pink in the autumn. These berries are reported to be twice as sweet as blueberries, and can be used in all the same ways. And after the crop has gone (I wonder if it will prove as irresistible to birds as blueberries? Best buy a net at the same time…), the fall foliage colour of the pinkberry is bright orange!
Plants are currently on sale for £14.99, with delivery scheduled for November 2012.