Lycium barbarum Sweet Lifeberry

Goji (Lycium barbarum) 'Sweet Lifeberry'® is a compact variety, offering small violet flowers, followed by the formation of elongated berries, with a delicately sweet taste, and red in colour. These berries have nutritional properties known for millennia and are exceptionally rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Planting in autumn or spring, harvest in August.

Goji (Lycium barbarum) belongs to the Solanaceae family, just like tomatoes and potatoes. It is a deciduous bush with a controversial origin. It was long considered to come from China, but recent research has shown that it could be native to the Mediterranean basin, which tends to be proven by the species name 'barbarum', the Barbarian, which was assimilated in Linnaeus' time to North Africa.

The Common Lycium is a woody bush, with an upright, widely spreading, ramified habit, reaching a height of 1.50 to 3m (4ft 11in to 9ft 10in) at maturity, depending on the growing conditions. Its growth is moderately fast. The numerous branches are flexible and trailing, with a few long sharp spines. The foliage is deciduous, thick, leathery, fairly bright green in juvenile leaves, evolving to a greyish green in mature leaves. The latter, of modest size, are elliptical and elongated, wider towards the base, and measure 2 to 3cm (0.8 to 1.2in) in length and 6mm (0.2in) in width. The very nectariferous and nectar-rich flowering takes place from June to July, in the form of small flowers, 10mm (0.4in) in diameter, tubular, campanulate, and star-shaped, hermaphroditic, of a violet colour for this variety. It is followed by the formation of ovoid berries, initially green and then orange-red at maturity, about 18mm (0.7in) in length. These berries are edible when ripe: it is preferable to consume well-ripened picked berries when the solanine content has decreased in the pulp. The fruits contain about twenty small seeds. The rooting of this bush is shallow.

This small fruit is rich in carbohydrates and proteins, low in lipids. It is very rich in calcium, potassium, iron, selenium, vitamins E, B2, beta-carotene (which gives it its orange colour), and vitamin C (which makes iron particularly assimilable by our body). The Lycium pulp has been the subject of numerous studies in recent years, which tend to prove that it has antioxidant properties.

Goji integrates perfectly into the ornamental garden. With its long branches, it can easily be trained against a support. It is a beautiful bush that can be included in a countryside hedge, in the company of currants and flowering shrubs, or trained with thornless garden blackberries. Resistant to drought and very hardy, Goji adapts to the climate and can be planted across a wide climatic range. It will simply be more productive in rich and moist soil.

In France, there are three species of Lycium that grow in the wild: Lycium europeanum, Lycium chinense, and our Lycium barbarum. Two of them are native to southern Europe and L. chinense has been brought from eastern Asia. The latter has naturalized in many places. Lyciums were used in Roman and Greek pharmacopoeias, they fell into oblivion, then reappeared with us, in the form of 'Goji berries', in the late 90s, when China opened up to the world and experienced rapid development.