Story behind the art of Diane Shane-Schuldt

Botanical Art Worldwide 2025-A More Abundant Future:

Diversity in Garden, Farm, and Field

American Society of Botanical Artists at the Foundry Art Centre, St. Charles, MO

Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry

Physalis pruinosa

Over the past few years, I have been selecting different heirloom plants to grow in my garden that cannot be found in my local markets. Each year I find more and more seed sources for heirloom plants and am grateful to the individuals dedicating their time to ensure that these plants are not lost. It’s engaging to read about their histories and paths to cultivation. I am fascinated by the whole growth cycle from seed to harvest and love the unusual and “imperfect” shapes and colorations. I record the different stages of growth in sketches and drawings in journals throughout the growing season.

When I learned about the A More Abundant Future: Cultivating Diversity in Garden, Farm, and Field exhibition, I researched a number of heirloom seeds that might prove to be interesting candidates to grow. The ones I chose to try came from Baker Creek Rare Seed Catalog: a succotash bean that was thought to have been cooked for the first Thanksgiving meal and Aunt Molly’s ground cherry.

I thought I would create a drawing of the succotash bean plant to submit to the exhibition; I wanted to feature the vines, pods, and beans through stages of maturation. Unfortunately, the vines did not begin to set blossoms until early September and the beans only started appearing in late September. The deadline for submitting to the exhibition would not leave me enough time to finish the piece should I wait until the beans matured. Instead, I chose Aunt Molly’s ground cherry, Physalis pruinosa.

Ground cherry is native to northern Mexico through Central America and is related to Cape gooseberry, Physalis peruviana, native to South America. While researching the history of Aunt Molly’s ground cherry, I read the first mention of the ground cherry plant was in 1837 by Pennsylvania botanist William Darlington. Several sources report that the Physalis pruinosa was brought to Poland from the US and then returned to the US by Polish immigrants to Pennsylvania. I also learned that it was the Territorial Seed Company which came across the unnamed variety from the US Department of Agriculture seed bank. They released it after successful trials in 1992, and decided to name it after their first business, an ice cream shop called Aunt Molly’s Ice Cream Treats. Aunt Molly’s ground cherry has been designated by the global Slow Food movement as an important and endangered heirloom food and is listed in the Ark of Taste, which is an international online catalog of endangered heritage foods.

The flavor of the berry has a sweet pineapple or vanilla flavor. It is still popular today among Pennsylvania Dutch communities for making jams and preserves. However, harvesting the berry on a commercial scale has proven difficult due to the sprawling nature of the plant and the tendency of the berries to drop off when ripe. The berries also need to be removed from their papery husk. I did not have time to make jam from the plants I grew this past summer but intend to do so next summer when I grow them again.

The ground cherry’s growth is indeterminate, and the vines sprawled abundantly across my raised bed. The plants continued to bloom and fruit from July in my zone 5 garden until frost. I found the early fruits to be the largest and sweetest. I observed that the mature stems had a thin, burgundy colored edge and the tiny delicate blossoms had similar color patches. I chose to draw a stem that showed the stages of blossom through the pod maturation, and included a detail of a blossom showing the outside of the amber colored ripe fruit with the husk peeled away. I added a graphite drawing of another sprawling stem to the background to indicate the dense layering habit of the plant.

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