While birding on Warraber Island a couple of weeks ago I picked an
attractive yellow fruit the size of a large cherry, peeled off a section of
rind with my thumbnail and noted a cluster of seeds inside. (an unidentified
bird had been hopping about in the small tree, we wondered whether it was
eating the berries.) Penny put the fruit into her pocket for later perusal.
That night I noticed I had what looked like very dirty thumbnails, but
having surrendered my nail-scissors to security on the flight up couldn't
cut them until returning tho Cairns a couple of days later, when what looked
like dirt was in fact stained skin under the nail.
That night Penny noticed what she thought was a large deep bruise on
her thigh and that the "bruise" was enlarging and numb. Later the
superficial skin over the 15cm "bruise" peeled off. Her pocket containing
the yellow fruit had been resting on that area. Two weeks later the
discoloured areas on her thigh and under my nails is still present.
Looking up a "Bush Tucker' and also a "Bush Medicine" book, the fruit
was easily recognised from pictures in both as the STRYCHNINE TREE, the
seeds of which contain strychnine. It is common throughout Northern
Australia, produces masses of attractive orange fruit like miniature oranges
from February to August which "are not edible", were used by Aboriginals as
a fish poison.
Hmmm.
( Warraber is an Island in Torres Strait, one of six that we visited on
an otherwise wonderful trip in the motor-sailer Jodie-Anne II, organised by
Mike Carter, and during which we saw many interesting things, including
birding morsels like Papuan Flower-pecker, Pale White-eye, Collared Imperial
Pigeon, Singing Starling, Gurneys Eagle, flocks of an unidentified lorikeet
from Papua, and a possible Variable Goshawk, not to mention many other
mainland species, seabirds and waders. )
Michael Hunter
Mulgoa Valley
50km west of Sydney Harbour Bridge
Scanned by PeNiCillin http://safe-t-net.pnc.com.au/
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