NATIVE CHERRY (Exocarpos cupressiformis)

Family: SANTALACEAE

Habit: An evergreen, small parasitic tree, 2 - 6m high and a spread of 3m, with a dense grown of drooping leafless stems, looking like a Cypress or She-oak. This parasitic plant often suckers from its roots to form new plants.

Habitat: Fertile, sandy or stony woodlands, heaths and open forests, from Queensland to Victoria and Tasmania.

Leaves: Leafless, has Cypress like foliage.

Flower: Minute, greenish to yellow appearing mainly from October to May.

Fruit: Red, sometimes yellow, 5 - 10mm long, attached to a hard seed. Ripening mainly in summer and autumn.

• Aboriginals ate the sweet, slightly astringent fruits.
• The close grained wood was used for spear throwers by the Yarra Aboriginals of Victoria.
• Green branches were placed in fires as the smoke keeps mosquitos away.

• On the 9th of May 1792, during a voyage in search of missing French Mariner La Perouse. Labillardiere, a French Naturalist, while on the coast of Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), recorded in his diary finding "an evergreen tree which has its nut situated like that of the Acajou (cashew), upon a fleshy receptacle much larger than its self. I therefore name this new genus Exocarpos".
• In 1892 Dr Laruterer wrote that the twigs "prove as good a bitter tonic and astringent as the South American Rhatany".
• Pioneers and settlers ate the fruits which were also made into jams and pies they also used the wood for carving and turning.

 

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