Ground cherry

Ground cherry: what was it used for?

The berries, slightly acid and bitter, as a diuretic and aperient for gravel, suppression of urine, and gout, six to twelve berries or half an ounce of the juice; in America the juice of the ground cherry, one or two fluid ounces, for gravel, difficult urination, and fevers with scanty urine; the leaves boiled for poultices; and the bitter principle physalin against intermittent fever.

Ground cherry: what does modern science say?

The genus is a chemist’s, for its withanolides and physalins. From the goldenberry, Physalis peruviana, a 2025 study isolated a new withanolide, physaperuvin K, from the edible fruit; it inhibited NF-κB signalling in cells at 10 nanomolar without killing them. The fruit is a source of fibre, ascorbic acid, and potassium, and its extract checked colorectal and lung cancer cells in the dish. The winter cherry is not harmless: its fruit extract was more toxic than its calyx to zebrafish embryos, and in Germany it was among the fruit plants most often reported to the Erfurt poison centre over ten years, though poisoning by fruit plants there was rare and 82 percent of exposures were without symptoms.

Ground cherry: what did the older authorities say?

Nicholas Culpeper

Winter-cherries are “a plant of Venus,” not native to England but cherished in gardens for their virtues: the leaves cooling, for inflammations; the berries opening, provoking urine plentifully when it is stopped or hot and painful, and expelling the stone and gravel of the reins, kidneys, and bladder. Three or four handfuls of the bruised berries put into as many gallons of new beer or ale make a drink which, “taken daily, has been found to do much good to many, both to ease the pains, and expel urine and the stone, and to cause the stone not to engender.”

C. S. Rafinesque

Holds all the species equal to Solanum virginicum, “but berries acid bitterish, liked by children, good diuretic and sedative.”

Charles F. Millspaugh

Notes among the nightshades that many species of Physalis are valuable, and that the winter cherry “has been considered an excellent diuretic from the days of Dioscorides; Ray considered it also anti-podagric.”

King’s American Dispensatory

Gives the berries of Physalis viscosa, the ground cherry or yellow henbane of dry fields and roadsides, as tonic, laxative, and diuretic, said also to be sedative, their juice reputed very beneficial in gravel and difficult urination, one or two fluid ounces; and reports that Dessaignes and Chautard in 1852 obtained from the European winter cherry its bitter principle, physalin, “which has been employed with success in intermittent fever.”

Mrs. M. Grieve

Records that in Germany, Spain, and Switzerland the berries are eaten freely; that Ray told of a gouty patient who kept off the disorder by taking eight berries at each change of the moon, and that Dioscorides claimed they would cure epilepsy; that country people use them for their beasts and for themselves, especially after scarlet fever; and that the plant sold in pots as winter cherry is Solanum pseudo-capsicum, no Physalis at all.