December is the breeding season of the Wedge-tailed Eagle. We often see them in pairs, gliding majestically on thermal columns high above the paddocks.

Sulphur-crested Cockatoos herald rain, wheeling in large noisy flocks as they fly down from the north, their distant chatter building to a massed screech as they approach. 

Summer is also the season of the Kangaroo Apple.

During our first year here I asked a friend the name of the attractive plant with the large-lobed leaves and pretty purple flowers. She told me that it was a Kangaroo Apple. I thought she was pulling my leg.

Whatever next, I laughed, Koala Pears? She looked at me blankly. I realised that she wasn’t joking. Nobody seemed to know why they were so named.

A member of the Deadly Night Shade family (Solanacea), the fruit of the Kangaroo Apple is poisonous if eaten when unripe.

After it flowers, the shrub produces pale green, oval, cherry-sized fruit that changes colour as it ripens to yellow, then to orange and finally to red. 

To ripen the yellow fruit faster, indigenous people buried it in mounds of sand until it was soft and turned red. 

Common in moist regions of eastern and southern Australia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, the Kangaroo Apple can be grown from seed or cuttings.

It’s a fast-growing, short-lived, medium sized shrub that’s worth growing not only for its attractive flowers and fruit, but for the bush tucker it provides. Once ripe – and it needs to be very ripe and red – the fruit can be dried, preserved in olive oil and used instead of dried tomatoes. 

I’ve grown a few Kangaroo Apples from seed. I recently transplanted two of the larger plants to the front of the block where they’re in a semi-shaded spot beneath a wattle. While they’ve benefited from rain over the past couple of weeks, they’ll need a little T.L.C. until they’re established.

A couple of small plants are nearly ready to be moved to larger pots where I can keep an eye on them through Summer. In Autumn I’ll find them a permanent home.

One planted at the far end of the garden, over a year ago, struggles after being repeatedly mauled by possums. We placed a cage of chicken wire around it for a while, until it started to look a little sturdier. Growing in heavy clay soil, it enjoys some compost every so often but the Choughs invariably rake it away. It’s only just hanging in there.

Here’s something that you might not know and which you could impress your friends with: two species of Kangaroo Apple (Solanum aviculare and S. laciniatum) are important sources of the steroid, solasodine, used in oral contraceptives.

As far as the name is concerned, only today our neighbour set me straight: the lower section of leaf is the same shape as a kangaroo’s paw. I don’t know why I didn’t realise that before; sheer stupidity, I expect.