Category: Queensland State Archives’ Photostream About Fortitude Valley

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Avocado Pear.

For some quite unknown reason the avocado pear, or alligator pear (Persea gratissima), continues to attract very little attention among orchardists throughout Queensland. This state of affairs is the more remarkable when the high quality of the fruit and the fact that certain localities throughout the state are almost ideal for its cultivation. The native home of the avocado is tropical America, and from there it has been brought into cultivation in many parts of the tropical world.
Wilson Popence, in his instructive work dealing with tropical fruits, quotes the Indians of Guatemala as saying “Four or five corn cakes, an avocado, and a cup of coffee – this is a good meal.” One is, perhaps, dubious concerning corn cakes, but concerning the avocado as a contributing factor towards a good meal, one who has had the experience of tasting avocado pears in different parts

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Pears are still one of the few fruit that can be easily bought according to variety. The corella is a pear developed in the Barossa Valley from seed brought by German settlers. It’s a small to medium pear with golden to red streaked skin. Delicious firm and soft, it has an almost tropical flovour and is good for eating and cooking. The packham is another Australian variety and a very common world cultivator. A large and often bumpy pear, it is slow ripening and is available for most of the year. The versatile and populat Bartlett, also called a William or Duchess, is often the choice for production, such as canning and used to make the French Poire Williams, a delicious very boozy eau di vie (brandy), which is great as a digestive.

Beurre bosc are a very attractive pear, a russet brown colour with a

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Pawpaw for Xmas Hampers

The pawpaw is a magic fruit of the jungles of the tropics in northern Queensland. it bears a noble crop in plantations from the Endeavour River to the Tweed, and its ripened golden-fleshed gourds provide Queenslanders with a deliciously refreshing and sustaining fruit of great medicinal virtue. Whilst it is not effectively transported in a ripe state to the great markets of southern cities, when this fruit is cooked and prepared in preserves, salads, and chutneys, its exceeding great value is made to be widely appreciated. The Queensland Preference League by its enterprise in selling Christmas hampers containing various preserves of the golden pawpaw, to be delivered as presents from Australians to their friends overseas, is doing much towards popularising the pawpaw and extending a valuable export trade. With over 20 other products of Queensland’s orchards, fields, and farms a compact hamper

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Originally from southern Mexico (particularly Chiapas and Veracruz), Central American, and northern South America, the pawpaw is now cultivated in most tropical countries. In cultivation, it grows rapidly, fruiting within three years. It is, however, highly frost-sensitive, limiting its production to tropical climates.

Two kinds of pawpaw are commonly grown. One has sweet, red or orange flesh, and the other has yellow flesh; in Australia, these are called “red papaya” and “yellow pawpaw”, respectively. Either kind, picked green, is called a “green papaya”.

The pawpaw is a small, sparsely branched tree, usually with a single stem growing from 5 to 10 m tall, with spirally arranged leaves confined to the top of the trunk. The leaves are large, 50-70 cm in diameter, deeply palmately lobed, with seven lobes. Unusually for such large plants, the trees are dioecious. The flowers are sweet-scented, open at night and are moth-pollinated.

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Oranges are the most widely known citrus fruit in the world and are high in nutritional benefits. The most popular product made from oranges is orange juice. Orange juice made with freshly squeezed Australian oranges is widely available across Australia

Oranges probably originated around the south-west China and north-west India regions. They have been cultivated around China for several thousand years. Images of citrus trees were found in the remains of buildings in Pompeii. The illustrations were preserved by the lava from the volcanic eruption that destroyed the city in 79 AD.

Around 1450, oranges were introduced to the Mediterranean basin by Arab traders. The Portuguese then brought better types from China and also took them to Brazil. In 1788 the First Fleet brought orange, lime and lemon seeds from Brazil to the new colony of New South Wales.

Oranges are grown commercially throughout the world and the

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For lush tropical juiciness and sweet flavours pawpaw and papaya, are up there with the best. Originating from Central and South America, these oval-shaped fruit can grow up to 30cm in length. Packed with all kinds of nutrients, including vitamins A and C, potassium and magnesium, they’re a perfect healthy snack.

Papayas have red-orange flesh and a yellow-orange skin and pawpaws have yellow flesh and a light orange skin. Papayas are the sweeter of the two. There are two main varieties of papaya grown in Australia and these are available all year round. Also available is green papaya, which is used mostly in Asian-style dishes.

Choose near-ripe fruit – they’re ripe if the skin is a yellowish orange colour. Also, check that the skin is smooth and unblemished and that the fruit feels heavy for its size.

Ripen at room temperature until the fruit gives slightly when pressed.

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The fabulously delicious fig – known to the Egyptians as the “Tree of Life” – is a wonderful addition to most backyards (and kitchens). A large, deciduous, well-shaped tree, the fig is an excellent shade specimen for small to medium sized backyards, and can be trimmed or trained into a manageable size or grown as a hedge.

Figs are a versatile fruit – they can be eaten fresh, glazed, dried, poached and cooked, and are a very healthy option as well. Figs are high in fibre and vitamin C and the sap of fig trees is reportedly useful in getting rid of warts!

As a sub-tropical tree, the fig prefers a Mediterranean climate with warm to hot summers and cooler winters so it is very suited to most areas of Australia. The hardy fig is quite adaptable though and will cope with cold winters, though if living

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Custard apples are a decadent and deliciously sweet-tropical fruit. The Australian custard apple is a hyrbid of the sugar apple (Annona squamosa) and the cherimoya (Annona cherimola), and is unique to any other custard apples grown around the world. Originally native to South America, this luscious and flavoursome fruit has Australia as its largest commercial producer.

There are four main custard apple growing regions, all found on the east coast of Australia. These regions stretch from the Atherton Tablelands in tropical north Queensland down to Lismore sub-tropical NSW, allowing for a great supply of quality and delicious fruit throughout the season.

Tropical North Queensland kicks off the custard apple season, with the first fruit of the year ripe for the picking in late January/early February, followed by Yeppoon in Central Queensland. The season then follows the coast down to the Wide Bay area, and the Sunshine Coast

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Casuarina equisetifolia, or Australian pine tree, is a she-oak species of the genus Casuarina. The native range extends from Burma and Vietnam throughout Malaysia east to French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu, and south to Australia (north of Northern Territory, north and east Queensland, and north-eastern New South Wales).

The specific name equisetifolia is derived from the Latin equisetum, meaning “horse hair” (referring to the resemblance of the dropping branchlets to horse tail). Common names include coast sheoak (coast she oak, coastal she-oak), beach casuarina, beach oak, beach she-oak, whistling tree, horsetail beefwood, horsetail tree, Australian pine, ironwood, whistling pine, Filao tree, and agoho.

Casuarina equisetifolia is an evergreen tree growing to 6-35 m tall. The foliage consists of slender, much-branched green to grey-green twigs 0.5-1mm in diameter, bearing minute scale-leaves in whorls of 6-8. The flowers are produced in small catkin-like inflorescences; the male flowers in

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Curtain Fig Tree is a heritage-listed tree at Curtain Fig Tree Road, Yungaburra, Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. It is one of the largest trees in Tropical North Queensland, and one of the best known attractions on the Atherton Tableland.

The Curtain Fig Tree is of the strangler fig species Ficus virens. Normally these figs germinate on top of another tree and try to grow roots into the ground. Once this important step is accomplished, the fig will grow vigorously, finally kill the hosting tree and then grow on independently.

Although these figs kill their hosts, they are an epiphyte which basically feeds from the ground, unlike a parasitic plant which feeds from the sap of the host plant/tree.

Description source: Wikipedia

Image source: Queensland State Archives, Digital Image ID 877

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