fruit · The Trophy Room
Black Apple
A true Australian bush fruit — the native black apple, a plum-sized purple-black fruit of the eastern rainforests that Aboriginal peoples have eaten for millennia. Sweet, soft, and a little gritty, it's one of the original foods of the continent, long before any orchard apple arrived.
Identifying
- oval to round fruit ripening deep purple-black, roughly plum-sized
- soft, sweetish flesh around one or a few large glossy seeds
- grows on a tall rainforest tree with glossy leaves; exudes milky sap when cut
- an Australian native, not related to the true apple at all
Facts
- a genuine bush tucker fruit, eaten by Aboriginal Australians across its range for thousands of years
- in the same family (Sapotaceae) as the sapote and the egg-yolk fruit, not the rose-family apple
- the hard seeds were sometimes used as playing pieces and beads
