Is it gaggingly, nauseatingly awful, or just bitter and bad?

I've only tried it from one source and would like to get an idea if this was better than normal.

A poster on boards concerned with temperate fruit related a very bad experience with tasting a trifoliate fruit; he was on the verge of vomiting for an hour. But he located some trifoliates that were not nearly this way, ones that his children will eat repeatedly each year (though he won't). He grows them outdoors in Tennessee. These came originally from the edge of the Augusta National Golf Course, former site of the famous Fruitlands Nursery of the 1840s. He speculated that perhaps they had gotten a better selection of trifoliate from China (or wherever) and that these might be descendants. He kindly gave me directions (location and season) to find them and I collected some in November. (By blind luck I washed, dried, and stored them much as Dr. Manners recently recommended here.)

The fruit smelled notably better (more "fruity") than some Flying Dragon fruit a nursery near me gave me, but still tasted lousy of course. But it was not gaggingly nauseous by any means.

So, I wonder, is this selection notably better than run-of-the-mill trifoliate, or did my informant just have an unusually bad experience with his? Can kids eat regular trifoliate?

If it's any better, I have some seeds I can give. A better trifoliate would be a good starting place for some breeding.

I've at least smelled Flying Dragon, Large-Flowered, and Roubidoux. All three are nauseating to me, just to smell them. I've not yet encountered a true, pure Poncirus that I'd consider in any way edible.

Malcolm

I suppose there could be a "less foul tasting" trifoliate selection out there somewhere. My limited experience with them mirrors Dr. Manners. Wasn't as bad as the gallberry I once sampled in a fit of ill advised curiousity, but I'd eat a bushel of sour oranges before I'd snack on another trifoliate fruit.

.....Alan.

I even tried adding sugar to a trifoliate juice. There isn’t enough sugar to make it acceptable.
Terry

"Wasn't as bad as the gallberry I once sampled in a fit of ill advised curiousity."

Jonathan Dickinson, shipwrecked on the Florida coast in the 1600s, noted that the local Indians ate palmetto berries (saw palmetto, Serenoa). He described them in his later book as tasting like "rotten cheese steeped in tobacco juice." As a wayward lad on the same coast I of course thus had to try them. And now must agree.

As a gallberry veteran (childhood), I must agree. There aren't many things you might eat that could be worse than that. But at least they don't smell bad. They give you no warning at all of just how bad they'll be, until you begin to chew.

Poncirus, on the other hand, has that smell. I can walk into our classroom building and know that someone, in a lab down the hall, has cut one open -- the stench has permeated the air conditioning of the whole building.

Hello
I would like to know if the taste of various clones of poncirus were evaluated by the researchers to produce best hybrids with an acceptable taste ?
Does a report on such a work exist ?