Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Planchonella australis
Common name
black apple, wild plum, yellow buttonwood, black plum, yellow bulletwood
Family
Sapotaceae
Where found
Forest and stream banks. North from the Nowra district. Rarely elsewhere.
Notes
Tree to 30 m high. Fruit fleshy. Trunk strongly fluted and flanged at the base in larger trees. Bark wrinkled with short longitudinal fissures, sometimes corky. Young stems hairy with appressed brownish T-shaped hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), soon becoming hairless; lenticels often prominent. Leaves alternating up the stems, 6–16 cm long, 20–50 mm wide, thick and leathery, becoming hairless, upper surface shiny, lower surface paler green, tips blunt or bluntly pointed. Flowers green or whitish, with 5 petals, each 3-5 mm long, fused to about half-way. Flowers single or in 2-6 flowered clusters. Fruit purplish or blue black, oval or round, 20–60 mm long, 2–5-seeded. Seeds brown and shiny with a whitish elongate scar, about 20 mm long. Fruit ripe Sept.-Nov.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Planchonella~australis (accessed 1 February, 2021)
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