Collected 1770: Endeavour River Point Lookout
Observed 2017: Maui, Hawaii
Observed 2019: Brisbane Botanic Gardens
The artist has portrayed details of the distinctive flower and fruit formations with a rich and subtle delicacy. Flowers are shown emerging individually from a compound head, followed by fruitlets in diamond shaped outlines.
A small tropical evergreen tree in the coffee family, native to southeast Asia and Australasia. The succulent fruits are edible but have a very pungent, rancid aroma when ripe, apparently to attract fruit bats which disperse the seeds.
The fruit, juice, seed, leaf, bark and root are used as sources of traditional medicines by Indigenous peoples.
The leaves are used to make a red dye, while the roots yield a yellow dye.