Burdekin Plum

Other Names : Pleiogynium timorense, Tulip Plum, Guybalum
Formerly known as Pleiogynium solanderi, the Burdekin Plum has a dark grey trunk and often glossy, compound leaves. This tree can be found in vine thickets, gallery rainforest and along creek lines in tropical Queensland and Papua New Guinea. Flowering usually occurs between January and March, producing small, yellowish-green blooms that develop into fruit over the winter months. Harvest the fruits when they start to show signs of ripening, but don’t eat them straight away! They are hard and acidic straight off the tree and need to be stored for a few days. Aboriginals were known to bury the fruit underground to assist with the ripening process.

Health Benefits and Uses of Burdekin Plum

• Burdekin plums were popular among Aboriginal tribes and early settlers and explorers that came to Australia. The Aboriginal people called the fruit Gowan Gowan and Oolooboo and taught the European settlers how to ripen the Burdekin fruit properly by burying it in the sand and allowing it to soften and develop a sweeter flavor. In Australia, the Burdekin plum is also known to be favored by the brushtail possum and the sulphur-crested cockatoo.
• The fruit can either be eaten raw, cooked into jam or jelly, used to flavour meat, or to make wine.
• A ripe fruit is mostly water (73%), but has moderate levels of energy, fat, vitamin C and is high in fibre and most minerals. Analysis has shown that, like tree shape and fruit colour, the nutritional content is extremely variable between trees.
• In recent years Burdekin plums have also been tested and documented as offering nearly 5 times the antioxidant content of blueberries