Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia - Edward Ellis Morris

"The shrub which is called the native cherry-tree appears like a species of cyprus, producing its fruit with the stone united to it on the outside, the fruit and the stone being each about the size of a small pea. The fruit, when ripe, is similar in colour to the Mayduke cherry, but of a sweet and somewhat better quality, and slightly astringent to the palate, possessing, upon the whole, an agreeable flavour."

1852. G. C. Mundy, `Our Antipodes' (edition 1851, p. 219:

"The cherry-tree resembles a cypress but is of a tenderer green, bearing a worthless little berry, having its stone or seed outside, whence its scientific name of exocarpus."

1855. W. Howitt, `Two Years in Victoria,' vol. i. p. 33:

"We also ate the Australian cherry, which has its stone, not on the outside, enclosing the fruit, as the usual phrase would indicate, but on the end with the fruit behind it. The stone is only about the size of a sweet-pea, and the fruit only about twice that size, altogether not unlike a yew-berry, but of a very pale red. It grows on a tree just like an arbor vitae, and is well tasted, though not at all like a cherry in flavour."

1877. F. v. Mueller, `Botanic Teachings,' p. 40:

"The principal of these kinds of trees received its generic name first from the French naturalist La Billardiere, during D'Entrecasteaux's Expedition. It was our common Exocarpus cupressiformis, which he described, and which has been mentioned so often in popular works as a cherry-tree, bearing its stone outside of the pulp. That this crude notion of the structure of the fruit is erroneous, must be apparent on thoughtful contemplation, for it is evident at the first glance, that the red edible part of our ordinary exocarpus constitutes merely an enlarged and succulent fruit-stalklet (pedicel), and that the hard dry and greenish portion, strangely compared to a cherry-stone, forms the real fruit, containing the seed."

1889. J. H. `Maiden, `Useful Native Plants,' p. 30:

"The fruit is edible. The nut is seated on the enlarged succulent pedicel. This is the poor little fruit of which so much has been written in English descriptions of the peculiarities of the Australian flora. It has been likened to a cherry with the stone outside (hence the vernacular name) by some imaginative person."

1893. `Sydney Morning Herald,' Aug. 19, p. 7, col. 1: