Not only in China, but also in the Boston market.
Girl's name
Regarding the name "girl", Li Shizhen made a textual research: "Gai girl is the mistake of melon capsule, and the ancient melon aunt has the same pronunciation, and the voice of Niang capsule is similar." But this is an isolated evidence, which seems unreliable and can only be listened to. The only similar description is Zhu Yun's "Herbal Medicine for Disaster Relief": "Girls' food ... is like a bag, like a wild watermelon." This is also the earliest record of this name.
You may have seen a ripe "girl".
Probably because I feel embarrassed to eat girls, many people will add a strong accent when reading this word, turning it into an "aunt" or even an "aunt bird", and even write it down and add a grass prefix to show that it is a plant. I have heard a folk explanation about the latter reading: people who can eat can suck out the pulp and keep the peel intact, and then blow out the cooing birds with the peel as a flute. When I was a child, my tongue was not flexible (I practiced it later, and there were no children around me who went against the will. In short, I have never seen anyone who can achieve it, so I don't believe it.
Girl's generic name
After going to college, with a special fruit image, I quickly turned to the girl's official Chinese name-Physalis? L.) a general term for several plants. The characteristic of this genus is that the calyx grows into a sac in fruit, which completely wraps the berries inside, hence the name of the genus from the Greek word "bubble".
What is a girl?
That's beside the point. Let's go back to the plants. There are about 75-90 species of Physalis, most of which are from America, and at least 46 of them are endemic to Mexico.
Not all the sour pulp can be eaten, but the most widely cultivated and common species in the market is P. peruviana, which is native to high altitude areas in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The fruit of this species is yellow when it is ripe, and the coat of lanterns is usually withered and looks like papyrus when it is on the market. Peel off the calyx and let the berries pop between the teeth. The taste is similar to that of small tomatoes but slightly tough, but the taste is closer to that of strawberries or pineapples, sometimes with a layer of creamy taste. This species was introduced to China at the end of Ming Dynasty. Because of its tolerance to drought and barrenness, it soon spread to other places and even escaped into the wild. At about the same time as P. peruviana, P. pubescens, a closely related Physalis pubescens, was introduced to China, which is difficult to distinguish from the former in morphology. It is good for everyone to know that it can also be eaten.