KRUI
Owenia acidula
Plant Family
Meliaceae
Alternative Common Names
Emu apple, gruie, colane, moalie apple, sour plum, native peach, native nectarine, mooley apple, rancooran, warrongan, gruie-colaine, kangaroo apple, gooya.
Small tree, 4-8 m tall, with a milky juice and reddish wood, the branches drooping, the young shoots sticky, the bark grey-brown and broken into blocks. Prone to suckering.
Leaves - alternate, bright apple green composed of 9-25 leaflets, each leaflet 2-4cm long and 4-8mm wide.
Flowers - small and insignificant, greenish-cream, fragrant.
Fruit - quite large. They change from green to plum - coloured and then dark brown. 15-30mm in diameter, with crimson rather acid flesh and a hard bony stone.
Flowering spring.
Indigenous uses - edible fruit is sour but high in vitamin C; large seeds were used by children to play marbles.
Habitat
Found mainly on sand ridges and on sandplains in mulga communities; also recorded from gravelly red earths and sandy surfaced duplex soils in bimble box communities; occasionally on heavy clay soils.
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