Thread: Can anyone identify this tree please ?

Hi Harry,
I'm not sure I'm right, but it does look like Olive, as there is some fruit in the 2nd. photo, & they look like Olives.
Get some nice Bowls out of it, but need to cut & turn before it cracks.
Thatsmy2senceworth.

Thanks for your responses,
The fruit definitely looks like an olive but I don't think it's a regular olive (Olea europaea) or a native olive (Olea paniculata). It seems like a compound leaf with different shape and colour to the Olea pics I've seen. Happy to stand corrected though....
Some more info - The fruit ripens from green to yellow to orange-red. When cut, the sap under the bark is thick and red. I would guess that it's natural form is a large, spreading tree, probably of rainforest origin.

Hi Harry,
The plant that you have is Kaffir plum, Harpephyllum caffrum. It is often used as a street tree, the fruit is edible but only when it changes colour. It is part of the Anacardiaceae family which can be toxic,nice or both e.g. mango nice fruit but the sap is irritating to some people.

Thanks Wood Collector.
That's definitely it. There's not much info on Kaffir Plum timber but I found this -
"The pale reddish wood is hard, strong, fairly heavy and elastic. It polishes well but is not very durable. Very handsome when polished, it has been used as a general purpose timber, for furniture and beams and is also used for carving curios."
Sounds like it's worth a shot.

i would say its a wooden one

Hope you didn't get flooded in the recent floods down there.

I've got a huge Kaffir plum in my backyard and that's what you have.. I would agree with word elastic but I'm not sure about the word strong in relation to branches. When the cockatoos come in their droves to eat the fruit, their weight can snap branches. It will bend a fair way but even thickish branches will snap quite easily under their weight. The branch timber is very light in colour and appears quite porous/spongy and light in weight. Maybe the older trunk timber has the characteristics they speak of?

Thanks Bryn. Luckily my place is up in the hills. Lismore really copped it bad though. And it'll be months before the roads are repaired to their normal sub-standard condition !
Lappa, I don't know if the timber would be "strong" but it is quite heavy. I guess I'll find out...

Originally Posted by harry mac

Thanks Bryn. Luckily my place is up in the hills. Lismore really copped it bad though. And it'll be months before the roads are repaired to their normal sub-standard condition !
Lappa, I don't know if the timber would be "strong" but it is quite heavy. I guess I'll find out...

Glad to hear, i have a few friends down the way, but they are up high as well

As for the sub standard roads, i'm not even sure you can class some of those as roads

Had a chance to mill the Kaffir Plum over Easter. I'm liking the heartwood contrast. Hoping it will air-dry OK in my shed.
Kaffir plum.jpg

That would look great bookmatched, love it. Thanks for sharing!