Billardiera scandens

(Common Appleberry)

Description:Billardiera scandens is a bushy climber with slender stems and narrow (linear-lanceolate) dark-green leaves. From August to January it can be a mass of tubular greenish-yellow flowers which give way to shiny purple berries. The flowers attract honey eaters and the fleshy fruit is edible, supposedly tasting like stewed apples.

It’s a common species that grows in habitats as diverse as cool sheltered gullies to mallee scrub, from Tasmania, Victoria, and South Australia, through to New South Wales and Queensland.

It is a hardy climber that will grow in full sun to dense shade and in sandy to clay soils. It’s even possible to establish Billardiera scandens underneath established eucalypts, as long as they are given a little extra fertiliser.

These characteristics have ensured its popularity as a garden plant. It can become a tangled mess though, so it does need a bit of training.

B. scandens has close relatives that are also excellent garden plants, such as Billardiera longiflora, which has longer flowers It is also quite widespread, although not in Queensland or South Australia. Larger flowered forms of B. longiflora also exist and have been cultivated in California.

Billardiera scandens and B. longiflora are easily propagated by seed and cuttings, which strike very readily.

Photographs courtesy of Helen Moss

Sources:
Elliot W.R. & Jones D.L., 1985, Encyclopaedia of Australian Plants, Vol 2, Lothian Publishing Co.
Jones D. & Jones B., 1999, Native Plants of Melbourne, Bloomings Books.
Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants (ASGAP), website:http://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au/ASGAP/b-sca.html

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