The Gooseberry is probably a native of the North of England, but Turner said (s.v. uva crispa) "it groweth onely that I have sene in England, in gardines, but I have sene it in Germany abrode in the fieldes amonge other busshes."

The name has nothing to do with the goose. Dr. Prior has satisfactorily shown that the word is a corruption of "Crossberry." By the writers of Shakespeare's time, and even later, it was called Feaberry (Gerard, Lawson, and others), and in one of the many books on the Plague published in the sixteenth century, the patient is recommended to eat "thepes, or goseberries" ("A Counsell against the Sweate," fol. 23).