“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
Moby Dick: Herman Melville
Well, yes, we all get like that from time to time. For some it’s getting to the sea (or “messing about in boats” to quote another classic), or hitting things in the shed, or going for a ride, or even walking through a forest. In this case (and on Stacy’s request – yes, I do listen… sometimes) we’re back in the rainforest and looking at Whalebone Tree (or Whalebone Fig), Streblus brunonianus.
Whalebone Tree is a small to medium size rainforest tree, getting to about 30m but generally quite a lot smaller, known as “Whalebone” for the spreading limbs’ alleged resemblance to whales’ ribs. It is a good colonising plant with the seeds spread by birds and the shade provided by its spreading limbs providing a good nursery for later successional rainforest species.
Typical of many members of the Moraceae (fig) botanical family, it has a milky latex. Leaves are thin, glossy, elliptic or ovate to lanceolate, 1-7cm long, 1-4cm wide, the leaves are alternate and very finely toothed along the margins. Juvenile leaves are often longer (to 15cm), narrow and lobed at the base.
Image from: https://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Streblus~brunonianus
The yellow-orange fruits are around 6mm in diameter with a single seed and have been described as tasting like mangoes. I’m not a fan of mangoes but I don’t mind these so they can’t taste too much like them. No special treatment is required for germination and according to Alex Floyd (Rainforest Trees of Mainland South-Eastern Australia) start germinating after 45 days.
The name comes from Streblus from the Greek “Streblos” meaning “crooked”, apparently referring to crooked branches, brunonianus after Robert Brown, the naturalist on Matthew Flinders’ ship “Investigator”. So nowhere near as interesting or suggestive as the name may imply.