Sweet Appleberry (Billardiera cymosa) is a tough, wiry climber that grows well in many situations. We have two vines in our garden that grow well in almost opposing conditions. One is on the fence, in full Sun. The other twines through the branches of our plum. Both are in good health, both fruit quite well.
It’s a delight to find Sweet Appleberry in the bush, better too if you hold the sausage- shaped brown fruit up to the Sun and see that its gone from solid green to almost transparent brown or purple.
This is the best time to eat the fruit and enjoy its apple like taste with a touch of aniseed. If you eat them before this, when they are still green they will be astringent and bitter.
The pretty purple or white tubular flowers are around from July to November. It’s interesting that there are plants with white flowers or plants with purple flowers, often growing in close proximity to each other. The flowers have five petals each has a slight fold along the mid-line at the end.
Leaves are long, linear (lanceolate) and up to 6 cm or so long and can have spares hairs, especially on the edges. They are alternate up a wiry stem that thickens and becomes woody with age.
If you follow these posts, or do any reading about Australian native plants, you might notice that many have 'Billardierei' as part of their taxanomic name. This is because they were named after French botanist Jacques Julien de La Billardiere (1755-1834), a French botanist who visited Western Australia and Tasmania, naming many of the newly found species there.
This is #originalwork. The pics were taken by yours truly.
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