From China, Only in a Bottle, a Berry With an Alluring Name

The fresh fruit, called yang-mei, is not yet available for sale in the United States. It is chewy and juicy with a pit like a cherry. Most varieties have a bumpy purple or red surface, like a litchi, although the skin is edible.

There are yang-mei festivals and pick-your-own orchards in the main growing area, Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai. Vendors by the side of country roads sell yang-mei in little baskets covered with ferns, and visitors sit under the trees and feast on ripe fruit.  The tree that bears this fruit, Myrica rubra, is native to southeastern China, and related to the bayberry species whose fruits are used for making candles in the United States.

The Chinese name means poplar-plum; in English it is called red bayberry or Chinese bayberry. The name yumberry was coined about 2003 by Charles Stenftenagel, a garden products importer from Indiana, when he was visiting a friend in Shanghai who owned a company that bottled the juice.

“Since the way they pronounced yang-mei in their dialect was ‘yang-mee,’ it sounded a little like ‘yummy,’ and that gave me the idea to call it ‘yumberry,’” Mr. Stenftenagel said. “We thought it might be a catchy name.”… More

there’s a new super-antioxidant star on the scene,

 the YUMBERRY  …. DeliciousLiving.com