Bush coconut

A Bush coconut

The Bush coconut, or bloodwood apple, is an Australian bush tucker food, often eaten by Aborigines of Central Australia.

The bush coconut is, in fact, a combination of plant and animal: an adultpores female scale insect, Cystococcus pomiformis, lives in a gall induced on a bloodwood eucalypt (Corymbia terminalis).

Bush coconut is called Merne arrkirlpangkwerle in the Arrernte language of Central Australia.

The gall looks like a small, knobbly woody fruit, ranging in size from a golf ball to a tennis ball, with a milky white flesh inside upon which the insect and its male offspring feed.^[1]

Aborigines pick them and crack them open with a rock. The Arrernte call the insect angure.

See also

• Mulga apple

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