Kattang Nature Reserve is full of wonders, some more curious than others.
While looking like an exotic tropical fruit, this plant is a native, with the rather demeaning name of Common Milk Vine, Marsdenia rostrata. It is so called for the milky sap it exudes. Unlike Marsdenia viridiflora, Bush Banana, this large fruit is not edible.
However, this native vine’s fruit certainly is edible; in fact, it’s delicious. With the offputting but apt common name of Cockspur Thorn, Maclura cochinchinensis, it is the scourge of bushwalkers or regenerators but its sweet fruit is beloved by birds… and people!
To me its taste is reminiscent of Jaffa lollies, its texture soft like a raspberry.
(The yellow spots on the leaves are apparently not typical.)
Most curious of all, this yellow item that has been puzzling me for weeks turns out to be a root of this same Maclura, I am told, albeit in a different place. Fungi, decaying plastic?