Solved Is this ribes?

My brother insists that this plant, which I did not plant myself but is located in the back of my garden, is ribes, and therefore edible.
I tried a berry and I can report that I am still alive, even if the taste was not great, extremely tart.

If it is actual ribes, I might try and bottle some with vodka, to see if it makes for it is any good.


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Yes it is ribes....Nigram I think (need to check that for sure) ...the edible blackcurrant bush Aldo.
However, not all ribes are edible. They also make attractive flowering plants which are not edible, to my knowledge

 

Thanks for confirming that !
The taste was questionable, but then it is a pretty shady corner of the garden, so that does not help. Perhaps letting them steep in alcohol will be a good use for it.

 

“Steeped in alcohol”. ........sounds good to me Aldo

 

Aldo. OK it's a Ribes, but not meaning it is edible. Ribes according to most horticultural write-ups simply means....Flowering currant. Please stick to, red/white or black currants.

 

Looks like a self seeded Blackcurrant growing from a seed deposited by a passing bird. Blackcurrants make an excellent liqueur with a very intense flavour that masks the alcohol content. They can be rather tart even fully ripe, so you may to adjust the amount of sugar if adapting a liqueur recipe for another, sweeter fruit.


Fruit of Ribes Red Flowering Currants look like this

 

Yes, pretty sure Aldo has an edible variety

 

Where I am from, Limoncello and Mirto (which is made of myrtle, which is of course a very tart berry) are made by steeping the berries or fruits in alcohol for several weeks. The result is then filtered and cold, preboiled, sugary water added. I like the result very much.
Initially I thought of simply steeping the berries in vodka, but perhaps I could try like that, given like you say they are pretty tart in taste.

Ideally, I would like to use pure alcohol, like they do with that liqueurs I mentioned, but I think that in the UK pure alcohol is not available for purchase by the general public, so I guess I will need to try with either vodka or gin.

I am not sure if that blackcurrant is actually self-seeded. It might well be, but the landlady tried to create a "berries corner" in there, planting strawberries and raspberries, so perhaps she planted that too. I have to say, it is a very sad little bit of the garden , getting perhaps 5 hours of sun at the height of the season, the only thing I managed to grow there were carrots, rocket and radish.

 

It's a black currant, great for jams and juices. The fruit turn black long before they are actually ripe, so you might want to taste again when the first ones fall off and are burstingly soft. Let us know how your Currantcello turns out, it sounds like a very good plan!

Currants spread easily by seed and also grow suckers. It's an attractive and healthy plant, I have just started to grow a cutting as a standard. Hopefully it will make a pretty container plant in a decade or two

 

Ah I totally forgot, the thought about Currantcello unhinged my brain temporarily.

The leaves! You can make a great drink from them, this recipe uses yeast but you can do without, just with boiling water, sugar and a dash of lemon

Finnish Blackcurrant Leaf Drink Recipe "Louhisaaren Juoma" - SaimaaLife

The leaves are also great for flavouring pickled cucumbers. I used to make nice pocket money as a kid by selling the leaves when cucumbers were ripening and 110% of the population was pickling them

 

Thanks, this is so interesting!
I will give it a go for sure, also considered that most berries have in the meanwhile disappeared (courtesy of the doves I suspect, they must have got tired of waiting for my grapes to mature..)