Chaura

What it is

This chaura is Gaultheria mucronata, also called manzanita, or little apple. Around Ushuaia its berries are about 1 cm (0.4 in) across. They sit among dark leaves that stay on the plant year-round, each ending in a sharp point. The fruit can be white, red or purple; its apple-like shape gives it its local nickname.

Where it comes from

Chaura is native to Argentina and Chile. It grows in the Río Grande, Tolhuin and Ushuaia areas of Tierra del Fuego, and in coastal forest on the Chilean side of Patagonia. On Kalau Island, it grows in openings among southern beech and mañío trees.

The fruit belongs to the food traditions of the region’s Indigenous peoples. The Selk’nam of Tierra del Fuego gathered and ate it, as did the Kawésqar along Chile’s coast.

How it's eaten where it grows

Fresh chaura is eaten on its own or made into juice, jam, homemade liqueur and dulce. Fully ripe berries suit dulce; green ones can turn the preserve bitter. In Chile, chaura also goes into chicha, a fruit drink associated with the old chaura-cahuín, or chaura festival.

How it's grown

Chaura grows as a much-branched evergreen shrub, with small white flowers that hang downward like bells. Around Ushuaia it grows near the coast and in clearings. There, the plants flower and fruit twice a year, giving the shrub more than one crop.

When and where you'll find it

In Tierra del Fuego, chaura is a common wild shrub of the forests around Río Grande, Tolhuin and Ushuaia, with fruit usually from January to March and again in September. Locally it is eaten fresh or turned into juice, jam and dulce. The dark, sharply pointed leaves tell it apart from the smaller Gaultheria pumila, whose leaves lack the prickly tip.