I've lived to tell the tale of the goji berry

So what is Goji Berry?

Yes it's that wrinkled red pellet you buy from your local grocer, or eat coated with chocolate (according to my daughter Emily), or find sprinkled on top of smoothie bowls, salads and granola at your inner-city brunch destination.

It is also one of those newly (to the west) discovered foods with purported health benefits. But more about that later.

The plants that bear these super berries are relatives of the tomato. But then so too are potatoes and deadly nightshade. Goji berries come from the box-thorn genus, Lycium, which has 70 species scattered all over the world but only one, Lycium australe, native to Australia (a handful of other species are weedy, includng African Buck-thorn, Lycium fericossimum, which is extremely so).

The berries we consume come mostly from two central Asian species, Lycium chinense and Lycium barbarum (apparently most of what is grown in the UK as Lycium chinense is Lycium barbarum, a not uncommon garden plant since the time of the 'Botanising Bishop', Henry Compton, who grew it at Fulham Palace in the late 17th century). Lycium barbarum is an occasional garden escape in Australia, and elsewhere.

Most species have edible fruit, including that weedy African Box-thorn, and some of the nutrional and medicial benefits may apply.

China has a 2000 year history of eating and prescribing Goji Berry (or Gouqizi), and now produces some 95,000 tonnes of berries each year. I think most of these berries are from Lycium barbarum, the species with accounts for most published research in the industry.

While I was in South China Botanical Garden in December last year, we heard about research lead by Professor Wang Ying (below) into another species, Lycium ruthenicum, the Russian Box-thorn. It grows in southern Russia through to China and Pakistan.

We also saw a range of new products using the root or berries of Goji Berry, mostly to promote 'long life'. According to Useful Tropical Plants, tonics made from the Goji Berry are one of the most poular in Chinese medicine.

Apart from adding to the days you'll spend alive, these tonics are said to 'clear the vision, strengthen the kidneys, restore semen [from what I'm not sure] and nourish the liver'. And the list goes on. As a food it is considered particularly nutritious, although I gather in Chinese traditional medicince there is not really a distinction between medicine and food that nourishes the body.

I can't add much to the science and the hearsay other than to say after consuming the following: dried berries, tablets, and a little of the tonic/juice, I'm still alive. So I have clearly lived a little longer, perhaps thanks to my goji banquet.