The fruits eventually fall, but then it’s a matter of getting to them before the ravenous hordes of red-legged pademelons, fawn-footed melomys and white-tailed rats descend. (Literally, in the case of the rats: they’re arboreal.)
You're blaming me? How much could I eat?
I’d been watching these bunches of fruit ripen, completely ignorant of the species, but hoping that they belonged to some wildly delightful type of bush tucker. There were a lot of them. They look like longans. Longans taste nice ...
Except, of course, they were brown tamarinds (Castanospora alphandii). The brown tamarind belongs to the same family as the longan (Sapindaceae)*, but has nowhere near as much flesh. The fruits are favoured by cassowaries, which swallow them whole. Judging by the number of chestnut-like seeds left among the leaf litter, the fruits are also popular with mammals.
Ferdinand von Mueller described the species in 1864 from material collected in the Seaview Range and around Rockingham Bay. An Australian rainforest endemic, it occurs in two main areas — in NE Queensland from Helenvale to Wallaman Falls and in SE Qld and N NSW from Gayndah to the Bellinger River. It is found at all altitudes.
That's about seven species I can identify now. Only a few hundred more to go.
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* But is not related at all to the real tamarinds (Fabaceae). Have I mentioned how much I dislike common names?
