Miracle Fruit – Synsepalum dulcificum

Plant family: Sapotaceae

Plant origin: West Africa.

Fruit description: Miracle Fruit is a small shiny oval fruit, about 2cm long, red when ripe. It contains a natural sweetener and when you eat it, it changes your tastebuds for 2 to 3 hours so that all foods including sour foods like lemon, taste sweet. Each fruit contains 1 small inedible seed. The fruit itself is quite sweet by itself.

Flowers: The Miracle Fruit bush has small white flowers.

Growing conditions: Plant the Miracle Fruit bush in a pot or in the garden in well-drained soil, in full sunshine. It is a warm, subtropical or tropical evergreen shrub that grows to 1.5 metres tall. Protect the plant from wind.

Uses: Eat the fruit fresh or store it frozen. Eat it with other fruits that usually need sugar to make them tasty. You can appreciate the lovely flavours and aroma of fruits, without any added sugar. But note, if you cook the fruit, the “miraculous” change to your taste buds doesn't work. The miracle fruit is excellent for people who are having chemotherapy as it masks the metallic taste that such patients get in their mouth and stimulates the appetite.

Medicinal uses:

Pollination requirements: Self-Pollinating.

Harvest time Pick the fruit when it is red, Miracle Fruit are produced for most of the year.

Plant relatives

Special features:

Grown by method: Seed Grown Pot size: 140mm

Plant growing Height and Width for pots or in the ground planting: Grows to 1.5 metres high by 1 metres wide if Planted in a Pot. Grows 1.5 metres high by 1 metres wide if Planted in the Ground.

Shipping plant pot or planter bag size: 140mm