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If you really had to lean a little closer to your screen, just to make sure you are seeing correctly, and maybe you zoomed in to have a closer look, and once you saw that uniquely shaped sack, designed with a network of veins, the exclamation - this weed?- escaped your lips in a gasp of air.
Such a response from you would not surprise me at all because I myself have cut this plant down many times. Just at first glance, I really don't know why this plant always screamed weeeed!, weeeed!!, Weeeed!!! And often, I had to cut it down without a second thought.

It was only a few days ago that curiosity got the best of me. So I went close and used Google Lens to inquire about this plant.

The pouch reminded me of the jug-like structure in a pitcher plant, so I went into investigative mode, wanting to know more about the plant, whether it is carnivorous, what is name its and whether it has any possible uses.

Google Lens identified two plants with similar characteristics, the cape gooseberry and the Ground Cherry, looking more like identical twins but with different temperaments.

Cape Gooseberry	Ground Cherry
Physalis peruviana.	Physalis pruinosa.

Similarities:

Both the Physalis peruviana and the Physalis pruinosa shield their fruit in a similar-looking pouch- a Papery husk or calyx. This fruit in a pouch is the most distinct feature of these plants.

Inside the pouch is a small round fruit, green when unripe and yellow when ripe, so you can't really tell one from the other based on its fruit, and once they are ripe, both plants are sweet and tangy with many small seeds inside the fruit.

Growing both plants requires relatively low maintenance and can thrive in similar poor growing conditions.

Differences

Property	Cape Gooseberry	Ground Cherry
Botanical name	Physalis peruviana.	Physalis pruinosa.
Fruit size	Larger fruits	Smaller fruits
flavor	Complex flavor	tart taste.
Leaf size	Larger	smaller
leaf shape	heart shape	Oval shape
Toxicity	None	Yes

Let's iron out the area of Toxicity.

Both fruits will get you sick if you consume them when they are unripe. They contain solanine, which gets broken down when they are ripe and yellow. Besides the ripe fruit, everything else on the Ground Cherry is toxic, including its unripe fruits, Flowers, leaves, and stems.

My advice on this:

If you are not really sure which is which, just don't eat it. Or are you that hungry? Then eat something else. That is my opinion, and it's definitely not an instruction, but hey! Don't eat what you don't know. Won't you agree with me on that?

I don't really know why this plant still feels like a weed to me. But you can buy the seed just to be sure. It comes well packaged and labelled as either Gooseberry or Ground Cherry.

But when it comes to this one, growing about, even when it is given a fancy name as 'volunteers' - a term that's basically giving a weed a promotion! I wouldn't dare risk munching on the evil twin of an edible plant just because it's an overachiever and looks vaguely familiar. If I had not consulted Google Lens, it would have still been labelled a weed and probably would have been uprooted by now. So, Google Lens basically gave it a glow-up, transforming it from a humble weed to a volunteer with real potential.

Thanks to Google Lens, I now have a vocabulary upgrade. I have Cape gooseberry and ground cherry as the names of two plants that look alike, and the word volunteers for a weed that has been accepted and given an opportunity.

What would you say about this? Did you know that this was edible? Or have you ever tested it? Is learning about the plant through Google Lens enough for you to give it a bite?

I am inviting you and the following to have your say in the comment section below.

@alexanderpeace, @ninapenda, @okere-blessing and @rubee2as1

Media Credit

Composer	@manuelhooks
Captured with	Galaxy-A15
Captured Date	Thursday. 7th August
Posting Date	Sunday. 10 August
	(@) 2025