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satinwood
Buchanania arborescens
Buchanania arborescens, commonly known as the little gooseberry tree or sparrow's mango, is a small and slender tree native to seasonal tropical forests of northern Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Solomon Islands.
The leaves are spirally arranged, smooth, leathery, elongated oblong, 5–26 cm long. The flowers are very small cream to yellowish white. The edible fruit are globular, small (1 cm long), reddish to purple-black.
From the article Buchanania arborescens on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
At the table
Aboriginal people eat the fruit raw. The plant is also used as a traditional medicine in Australia and Malaysia. The 1889 book 'The Useful Native Plants of Australia' records that "The unripe fruits of this plant were gathered, and, when boiled, imparted an agreeable acidity to the water, and when thus prepared, tasted tolerably well. When ripe, they become sweet and pulpy, like gooseberries, although their rind is not very thick. This resemblance induced us to call the tree 'the little gooseberry'tree" quoted from Leichhardt: Overland journey to Port Essington, p. 479.
Wikipedia: “Uses”
In human culture
The tree is called balingasay in Tagalog, and in pre-colonial times were regarded as domains (dambana) of Lakan Balingasay, the anito of the tree and probably of insects (due to comparisons with Beelzebub in accounts by friars).
Wikipedia: “In culture”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Buchanania arborescens in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 425525.