Category: Queensland State Archives’ Photostream About Fortitude Valley

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Plums may have been one of the first fruits domesticated by humans. Three of the most abundant cultivars are not found in the wild, only around human settlements in the East European and Caucasian mountains and Asia. Plum remains have been found in Neolithic age archaeological sites along with olives, grapes and figs.

The name plum derived from Old English plume or “plum, plum tree,” which extended from Germanic language or Middle Dutch, prume, and Latin, prunum.

Plums are a diverse group of species. The commercially important plum trees are medium-sized, usually pruned to 5-6 metres height. The tree is of medium hardiness. Without pruning, the trees can reach 12 metres in height and spread across 10 metres. They blossom in different months in different parts of the world; for example, in about January in Taiwan and early April in the United Kingdom.

Fruits are usually of medium

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Romance of Food: Oranges

Oranges are commercially the most important of fresh fruits, since they grow in all sub-tropical countries and can be brought without difficulty across the seas to the world’s markets.
Originally, the orange grew wild in Eastern Asia. It was cultivated at an early date in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean region, establishing itself in the sunny, mild climate of Italy, Southern France, and Spain. Orange trees were taken to the West Indies, Brazil, and Florida by the Spaniards, and the Franciscan Fathers planted them in California. And they flourish in South Africa and Australia.
Orange groves with their delightful fragrance, alive with birds and bees, are a delight to the senses, and no industry could be more welcome to the country than the cultivation of the golden fruit.
Frost is the greatest enemy of the orange grower. In some districts there is a system of

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The Blackall Ranges.
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Fruit Growing on the Top.
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Mr. Charles Ross, F.R.H.S. (instructor in fruit culture), has returned from a visit to the top of the Blackall Ranges. He travelled from Yandina to the foot of the ranges in a springcart, and thence “footed it” to the top. The locality visited bears the name of Coolloollabin.
Mr. Ross visited the district at the invitation of the local progress association. He states that several settlers both at the foot of the mountains and on top are growing bananas extensively, and are also giving some attention to cultivation of oranges. There is, says Mr. Ross, great variation of soil in the district, ranging from a good friable shaley loam to a strong volcanic loam. The tall varieties of bananas are doing remarkably well. The Cavendish bananas are a great success, and the growers say they pay best in the long

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On 6 September 1915, former Railway clerk Ronald Alexander Sowden enlisted with the AIF, aged 18 years and 1 month. He disembarked for Alexandria on 5 March 1916, and went into battle in France on 29 July. He was wounded in August 1916, and again in June 1917, but both times he recovered and was discharged for duty.

Then, on 26 November 1917, this letter is sent requesting confirmation of Sowden’s death. His service dossier confirms he was killed in action on 3 November 1917, in Belgium. Ronald Alexander Sowden’s name was published in the Roll of Honour on 19 December 1917.

Description source: Discovering Anzacs; The Northern Miner, 19 December 1917

Image source: Queensland State Archives Item ID 862636

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Cherries are a fleshy stone fruit from plants of the genus Prunus. The main species cultivated for edible frout are sweet or “wild” cherries (Prunus avium), which the Australian industry is largely based on, and sour cherries (Prunus cerasus). Sweet cherries are a naturally vigorous deciduous tree that becomes large and upright if unprune, reaching heights up to 11 metres. The bark is a decorative silver-grey, and the leaves are a large slender oval shape with a serrated edge. The tree has white blossoms in spring, with buds containing one to five flowers. The fruit is usually heart-shaped to round, about two centimetres in diameter, and ranges in colour from yellow to red and nearly black (depending on the variety).

Cherry trees are largely grown for their fruit, which in Australia is produced over the period from late October to mid-February. The fruit is eaten fresh

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Queensland Bottle Tree

Brachychiton rupestris is a member of the Sterculiaceae family and is commonly referred to as the Queensland Bottle Tree, Queensland-Flaschenbaum, or the Narrowleaf Bottle Tree or Kurrajong. The comman name “bottle tree” refers to the characteristic trunk of the tree, which can reach a 2 m diameter. The height of the tree is less impressive, with a maximum height of 18-20 m, smaller in cultivation; the canopy spans 5-12 m in diameter. The tree will drop its leaves before the flowering period, which is between the months of October and December. The characteristic bottle shape should develop in approximately five to eight years. The canopy will also thin out during a drought.

The species is endemic to a limited region of Australia, namely Central Queensland through to northern New South Wales. It grows in a soil that consists of a medium to heavy clay,

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The coconut tree (Cocos nucifera) is a member of the family Arecaceae (palm family) and the only species of the genus Cocus. The term coconut can refer to the whole coconut palm or the seed, or the fruit, which, botanically, is a drupe, not a nut. The spelling cocoanut is an archaic form of the word. The term is derived from the 16th-century Portuguese and Spanish word coco meaning “head” or “skull”, from the three indentations on the coconut shell that resemble facial features.

Coconuts are known for their great versatility, as evidenced by many traditional uses, ranging from food to cosmetics. They form a regular part of the diets of many people in the tropics and subtropics. Coconuts are distinct from other fruits for their large quantity of water (also called “juice”) and when immature, they are known as tender-nuts or jelly-nuts and may be

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Bauhinia Time

By Estelle Thomson

Flowering trees and shrubs make a pageant of the year in Brisbane streets.
October has the tawny gold and the ineffable blue of silky oak and jacaranda, and November the fresh loveliness of the single pink oleander.
The height of summer sees flamboyant ponsiana, and at Easter we have the cassia’s gold.
In May and June the scarlet banners of the poinsettia are hung out, and as they become a little tattered in July the wattle bursts into a foam of yellow. In August and September we have the bauhinias.
The bauhinias are native in many tropical countries, and are such favourites as ornamental trees that they are to be found wherever they will grow.
All Brisbane should recognise these beautiful trees that line so many of our suburban streets with white, or apple blossom-pink.
It is an ideal tree for street planting. Two species are quite plentiful

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When this tree is in bloom it’s a real showstopper. It’s the Hong Kong Orchid Tree and from February to November it’s a mass of colour. Bauhinias grow wild in tropical and subtropical regions of the world and this particular variety was found in China. Bauhinia x blakeana is though to be a chance hybrid between Bauhinia purpurea and B.variegata and it is the official floral emblem of Hong Kong.

Grow Bauhinia in the garden for its flowers alone. From a distance the tree is a mass of colour. Up close, the flowers, which are quite large, resemble orchids or butterflies and they range in colour from yellow through pink to deep purple. The flowers are also perfumed. On most Bauhinias the flowers are followed by long, flat legume like seed pods, which can stay on the plant for months and look a bit untidy, but

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Indigenous Australians enjoyed a diverse supply of interesting edible plants in the millennia before white settlement. Some, like macadamias, have been cultivated widely around the world for many years, but in the last few decades other lesser known “bush tucker” plants have been discovered by modern Australian chefs and gardeners. One of the estimated 5,000 edible plant species across Australia is Capparis mitchellii, commonly known as Wild Orange, Native Pomengranate or Mitchell’s Bumble Tree. The attraction of growing and eating these plants is not only their high nutritional value and unique flavours, but that they also provide habitat for native birds and insects and, therefore, a way of maintaining biodiversity.

Capparis mitchellii is a thorny tree which grows about six to eight metres high and four to six metres wide. It is slow growing. It apparently has a role in the dreaming stories of the Adnyamanthanha

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