The round leaves are the giveaway, thick and leathery and as big as your hand, red-veined when young and bronze when old. In the rains the bunches of small purple fruit hang like the grapes in the name.
Where you’ll see it
The top of the beach, right where sand meets scrub, all along the coast. It tolerates salt spray and shifting sand that would kill most trees.
What to know
Sea grape is a dune builder. Its roots hold the sand and its shade cools it, and it is one of the reasons the back of a beach is a beach and not a slope of blowing sand. The fruit is genuinely edible, sweet and grape-like around a large seed, ripening unevenly so a bunch has green and purple together. Eat the purple ones. It is not related to true grapes, which surprises nobody who has tried both.
