The World of Apples

The apples that aren't

Rough-barked apple

Angophora floribunda, Myrtaceae, the myrtle family

The rough-barked apple is a tree of eastern Australia up to 30 m tall, with persistent, grey, shortly fibrous bark, widely scattered and locally abundant on deep alluvial sandy soils3. Its fruit is only 7 to 10 mm long3. Kew gives its range as eastern Australia to eastern Victoria2.

The colonists named such trees for the tree, not the fruit4. Morris’s Austral English explains that apple was given to various native trees “in some cases from a supposed resemblance to the English fruit, in others to the foliage of the English tree”, and quotes Vigors and Horsfield, in 1827, on “Apple-trees (a species of Angophora)”4. In 1830 R. Dawson, looking down on river flats, was “perpetually reminded of a thriving and rich apple-orchard”, though the trees “bear no fruit, and do not even belong to the same species”; in 1847 J. D. Lang put the name down to “their resemblance to the European apple-tree in their size and outline”4. P. Cunningham, in 1827, thought they resembled the English apple only in leaf, and in 1852 G. C. Mundy wrote that “Pomona would indignantly disown the apple-tree”4.

Its relative Angophora costata is the smooth-barked apple5.

Sources

  1. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy: Angophora floribunda, Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Supports: the accepted name and family.
  2. Plants of the World Online: Angophora floribunda, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Supports: the accepted name and the native range, eastern Australia to eastern Victoria.
  3. Angophora floribunda, PlantNET, National Herbarium of New South Wales. Supports: the names apple and rough-barked apple; a tree to 30 m with persistent grey, shortly fibrous bark; the fruit 7 to 10 mm long; widely scattered and locally abundant on deep alluvial sandy soils in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
  4. Austral English: a dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages, entry Apple and Apple-tree, Edward E. Morris, Project Gutenberg, 1898. Supports: apple as a name for native trees, "in some cases from a supposed resemblance to the English fruit, in others to the foliage of the English tree"; the apple-trees as a species of Angophora (1827); the quotations of Cunningham (1827), Dawson (1830), Lang (1847) and Mundy (1852).
  5. Angophora costata, PlantNET, National Herbarium of New South Wales. Supports: the smooth-barked apple.