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Australian Natives, Edible Plants, Wildlife Friendly

Bush Tucker Plants for the Home Garden: What to Grow by Climate

Lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora), the easiest bush tucker plant for a home garden, grown for its intensely lemon-scented leaves used in tea and cooking

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Anyone who sets out to grow native food plants meets the same problem: the lists are long, the claims are loud, and little of it says what a plant tastes like, how much it gives, or whether it belongs in a suburban yard. The one idea that matters most is to treat a native food plant as you would any other crop. Know its name with certainty, know which part is eaten and how it is prepared, and match it to your climate.

This guide gathers what the Australian National Botanic Gardens, the Australian Native Plants Society, the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney's flora and the National Fruit Fly Council publish about native food plants a household can grow. It summarises their advice rather than replacing it, the sources are linked at the end, and on cultural knowledge it defers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, whose foods these are.

Quick facts

Whose food Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander food plants. Name them properly and credit the knowledge
Easiest wins Leaf and spice plants: one shrub gives more than a household uses, from the first year
Best backyard fruit Small self-fertile shrubs and hedges that crop within two or three years and take pruning
Needs a partner Illawarra plum and native pepperberry have separate male and female plants. Quandong needs a host plant
Never from the wild Cycad seeds and wild Solanum fruit. A plant is food only when identified with certainty
Main pest Queensland fruit fly in the east and north, Mediterranean fruit fly in WA. Net, bait, pick up fallen fruit

What bush tucker means, and whose food it is

Bush tucker is the everyday term for the native plants and animals that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have eaten, traded and managed for tens of thousands of years. Many people now prefer bush food or native food, and the industry body is named Australian Native Food and Botanicals. Whichever word you use, the knowledge of what to eat, when to pick it and how to make it safe belongs to particular nations and communities, not to a general Australian past.

A gardener holds that respectfully by naming plants properly, crediting the knowledge, and learning through Indigenous-run enterprises and educators where they exist. The Botanic Gardens' Aboriginal Plant Use resource, developed in consultation with Ngunnawal people for the Southern Tablelands and ACT, is a good model: it names its sources, stays regional and does not claim to speak for anyone.

Backyard plant or farm crop

Not every native food is a garden plant. The commercial industry rests on a short list grown at scale, among them lemon myrtle, finger lime, Davidson's plum, quandong, bush tomato, native pepperberry, riberry and macadamia. Some transfer to a backyard without fuss; others carry conditions.

  • Leaf and spice crops transfer best. One lemon or cinnamon myrtle yields more leaf than a household can dry, from the first year. Native pepperberry does the same in the cool south.
  • Small fruiting shrubs and hedges are next. Midyim, lilly pilly and riberry crop young, fruit alone and take pruning; a mature lilly pilly gives buckets. Finger lime is reliable but slow: the Native Plants Society notes seedlings can take five to fifteen years to mature, so buy a grafted plant.
  • Some are paddock trees. Bunya pine reaches 30 to 45 metres, cones about one year in three and drops cones heavy enough to injure anyone beneath. Blue quandong and Burdekin plum are large rainforest trees. Macadamia crops well, but it is a 15 metre tree and takes years.
  • Some have conditions. Quandong (Santalum acuminatum) is a root parasite that must be planted with a host, which makes it a dryland farm crop. Bush tomato belongs to a genus full of poisonous relatives and is best left to specialist growers.
  • Some are rare in the wild. The Sydney flora lists small-leaved tamarind as endangered and coolamon as vulnerable. Growing nursery stock helps a little, and is a reason never to collect from the bush.

Matching plants to climate

Most native food plants come from east coast rainforest, so the further you are from warm, moist conditions, the shorter the list. These groupings follow the distributions the Botanic Gardens and the Native Plants Society give.

  • Tropical and subtropical north. The full range: lemon myrtle, native ginger, riberry, lilly pilly, macadamia, Burdekin plum, native gardenia, Davidson's plum, finger lime and lemon aspen. Fruit fly pressure is highest here.
  • Warm temperate coast, Sydney to the Victorian border. Lilly pilly, riberry, midyim, Illawarra plum, macadamia, finger lime and warrigal greens all crop. Lemon myrtle wants shelter while young.
  • Cool temperate south: Victoria, Tasmania, the tablelands. Native pepperberry, bulbine lily, chocolate lily, native violet, pigface and appleberry are at home. The Botanic Gardens grow midyim in Canberra with shelter from severe frost, and report established lemon myrtle in protected positions surviving minus 8 degrees. Lilly pilly (Syzygium smithii) takes moderate frost.
  • Dry inland. Quandong, saltbush, bush tomato, pigface and bulbine lily. Rainforest species need shade, wind protection and irrigation.
  • Perth and Adelaide. Muntries, sea celery, saltbush, pigface (Carpobrotus rossii is the southern species), quandong and warrigal greens suit the dry summer. Lilly pilly, midyim and lemon myrtle grow with summer water and afternoon shade.

Plants for the home garden, by role

The linked plants are the ones we grow, listed under edible plants and bush tucker and Australian natives. Sizes are for gardens; rainforest trees run smaller in cultivation than in the wild.

Leaf and spice plants

  • Lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora): shrub to small tree, usually under 5 metres in a garden. Intense lemon leaf for tea, baking and fish. Frost-tender when young; content in a large pot.
  • Cinnamon myrtle (Backhousia myrtifolia): slower, smaller and hardier, native as far south as the Bega district. Milder cinnamon-scented leaf for teas and desserts.
  • Native ginger (Alpinia caerulea): clumping shade plant to 2 or 3 metres. Tangy pulp round the seeds of the blue capsules, mildly gingery rhizome tips, leaves for wrapping food. Frost-tender.

Fruiting shrubs and ground covers

  • Midyim berry (Austromyrtus dulcis): spreading shrub to about half a metre. Sweet white berries speckled purple, eaten off the bush from late summer, handfuls per plant. Plant three or more.
  • Pigface (Carpobrotus): trailing succulent for sand, salt and sun. The Botanic Gardens describe the fruit pulp as salty apple and the roasted leaves as a salt substitute.
  • Sweet appleberry (Billardiera cymosa): light climber from South Australia and Victoria. Fruit is eaten only when fully ripe and soft; it drops when ready.
  • Native violet (Viola hederacea): shade ground cover with edible flowers for salads and cakes. Looks first, garnish second.

Lilies and corms

  • Bulbine lily (Bulbine bulbosa): frost-hardy tufted lily with yellow flowers. The Botanic Gardens call the roasted corm the sweetest of the lily roots. A mouthful per plant, so grow a bed and let it seed.
  • Chocolate lily (Arthropodium strictum): temperate grassland lily whose flowers smell of chocolate. The small, crisp tubers were roasted; of most interest to school gardens.

Small trees and hedges

  • Lilly pilly (Syzygium australe): the workhorse. Crisp, mildly sweet fruit with a clove note, made into jam. Hardy across temperate and subtropical states and takes hard hedging.
  • Riberry (Syzygium luehmannii): pink, pear-shaped summer fruit, tart with a spice edge. A tree in the wild, a 3 to 5 metre screen with pruning; grown well south of its northern home in warm gardens.
  • Native gardenia (Atractocarpus fitzalanii): glossy small tree for frost-free subtropical and tropical gardens, with scented flowers and fragrant, sweet-fleshed fruit.
  • Illawarra plum (Podocarpus elatus): slow, handsome conifer. The plum is the fleshy purple stalk, not the hard seed on its end; resinous, best cooked, ripe autumn to winter. Needs a female and a male.

Large trees for big blocks

What to keep away from the table

  • Cycad seeds. Burrawang and other cycads carry large, tempting seeds that are highly poisonous. The Botanic Gardens record traditional processing of days in running water, pounding and roasting, and note that scientists disagree on whether it removes the poison. Not a home food.
  • Wild Solanum fruit. Bush tomatoes and kangaroo apples have poisonous relatives and poisonous unripe stages. The Botanic Gardens say kangaroo apple is ready only when the skin bursts, and cite a general caution on the genus. Grow only named nursery plants; never forage them.
  • Unprocessed items. Raw warrigal greens, raw bunya nuts, hard Burdekin plums and green finger limes are all wrong. Warrigal greens are blanched for three to four minutes and the water thrown out to remove oxalates. Only the two commercial macadamia species are eaten.
  • Flax lily berries in quantity. Dianella fruit is eaten, but the Botanic Gardens quote the advice not to eat many.
  • Anything unidentified. A plant is food only when you know its name with certainty; similar leaves and berries are not proof. If someone has eaten something uncertain, ring the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26, day or night, and do not wait for symptoms.
  • Cones overhead. Never plant a bunya where people, cars or a roof sit beneath it.

Getting it right

  • Soil and water. Most are rainforest edge plants that want moist, well-drained, mulched soil and shelter from hot wind. The Botanic Gardens' bush food garden page advises feeding little and often and watching pots closely, because nutrients and water drain fast from containers. Native ginger, native violet and young lemon myrtle sit under trees; midyim fruits best in full sun.
  • Partners. The Sydney flora records Illawarra plum as dioecious, so plant a female and a male; native pepperberry is the same. Lilly pilly, riberry, midyim and finger lime fruit alone.
  • Fruit fly. The National Fruit Fly Council lists Queensland fruit fly in the Northern Territory, Queensland, NSW and Victoria and Mediterranean fruit fly in Western Australia; Biosecurity Tasmania keeps that state free of both. Lilly pilly, riberry, finger lime and Davidson's plum are attacked. The Council's methods: net or bag fruit after flowers drop, bait weekly, hang traps at 1.5 to 2 metres on the eastern side of the tree, and pick up every fallen fruit, bag it, leave it in the sun for three days and bin it, never compost it. Keep trees small enough to net.
  • Birds. Fruit-eating birds find riberries and midyims first. Net what you want and plant extra for the rest; our guide to designing a native garden for wildlife shows how the two aims fit.
  • Keeping the harvest. Dry leaves whole in shade and grind before use. Freeze soft fruit on trays and cook it later into jams, sauces and cordials. Husk macadamias promptly, air-dry them in the shell for several weeks, then crack. Boil or roast bunya nuts, then peel and freeze.
  • Treat it as a fruit garden. Pruning, feeding and picking follow the same rules as any orchard, covered in our fruit and vegetable garden guide; our low-maintenance native garden guide covers the rest of the planting.

A word of caution

This page describes plants in cultivation, from published sources, and cannot cover every region, plant form or individual sensitivity. Cultural knowledge about these foods belongs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and any school, community garden or educator using it should seek out local Traditional Owners and Indigenous-run food enterprises first. For questions about a particular plant, ask your state herbarium or botanic garden; for any suspected poisoning ring 13 11 26.

Sources

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