I absolutely love Sea Grapes - eating the grapes that is. Well, I like the plant too and have several growing in large pots in my garden. As children, a big treat when we went to Crane Beach, was to buy a cone of sea grapes wrapped in a large leaf - the leaves can easily be 10 inches across. That is unless we were allowed to climb up to the top of the sand dunes to pick our own - now that was fun.
I haven’t seen Sea Grapes selling wrapped in a grape leaf for probably thirty or forty years, but you do occasionally see them selling in a small paper bag, but that’s fairly uncommon nowadays too. However, my favourite beach has large sea grape trees growing right on the beach, and we were able to pick some last year to enjoy in the sea. The photos shown here are taken on that beach. Maybe next time we go they will be ripe - unless, of course, they have all been picked by then. The ripe grapes are a delightful purple colour and though small, are juicy and sweet with a relatively large seed.
Sea Grapes grow all around the island, and as the name suggests, do well in salty conditions without much water. The ones I have growing in pots got watered for the first few days when they were young and then never again. They survive the constant wind and the salt with ease. I got my plants as seedlings growing up under mature trees and they transplanted without difficulty into pots.
Sea Grape is one of those unusual plants where male and female flowers grow on separate plants, so for pollination to occur, a male and a female tree must be in close enough proximity to each other that fertilization can occur. This takes places with the help of bees and other nectar feeding insects.
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