Skip to content

Your account

With an account, your progress (modules read, XP, badges, cards, notebook, pack, challenges) follows you on every device. Without one, it stays in this browser.

or
Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🍑 Desert Quandong

Santalum acuminatum · Santalaceae

🦘 Australia🏜️ Desert
🧠 To remember it“The red quandong shines like a desert peach” - spot the bright red shine of the fruit amidst the pale foliage.
Desert Quandong — Santalum acuminatum

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Small hemiparasitic tree (it draws part of its water and nutrients from the roots of neighboring plants) with pale green pointed leaves and fragrant cream-white flowers. The round fruit, turning from green to bright red when ripe, surrounds a hard, deeply pitted, very recognizable stone with a thin layer of flesh (3 mm).

  1. bright shiny red round fruit when ripe, thin flesh around a large hard stone
  2. pale green lanceolate leaves
  3. frequent presence in dry creek beds, granite plains, and sand dunes of central Australia
Size4-6 m
Floweringvariable depending on rainfall, fruit follows a few months later
Habitatdeserts and semi-arid areas throughout mainland Australia (Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland), tolerates drought, salt, and extreme heat

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Desert tomatoes (Solanum genus, e.g., Solanum centrale) (Solanum centrale)variable — some Australian desert tomatoes of the Solanum genus are toxic when unripe (solanine) and grow in the same dry creek beds and arid plains as the quandong

To tell them apart: the quandong grows as a hemiparasitic shrub/small tree and its bright red fruit surrounds a single large, hard, pitted, clearly visible stone; desert tomatoes grow as low bushy plants often covered in fine hairs or prickles, and their fruit contains numerous small soft seeds, never a single large central hard stone

Australian Sandalwood (Santalum spicatum)none (also edible)

To tell them apart: both species are hemiparasitic Santalum from the same semi-arid habitat, but the quandong stone has a rougher, more sculpted shell while that of the Australian sandalwood is smoother; furthermore, sandalwood timber is much more aromatic (highly sought-after essential oil), unlike the quandong

🍽️ Eating it

Partsfruit flesh, kernel inside the stone
Seasonvariable depending on local rainfall, often late summer to autumn in Australia
Tastetart flesh reminiscent of peach, apricot, or rhubarb; kernel tastes similar to sweet almond once roasted

Preparation : flesh eaten fresh, cooked into stewed fruit/pies, or dried for long storage; crack the hard shell to extract the kernel, edible raw or roasted and salted

💊 Healing with it

the kernel was traditionally applied to painful gums by Aboriginal peoples

Level of evidence : traditional use — Wikipedia - Santalum acuminatum

⚠️ no known toxicity

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • wood used as fuel and for crafting small items
  • seed oil historically used for lighting
  • stones carved into ornamental objects and game pieces by Aboriginal peoples
Sources (1)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.