Peanut Butter Tree

The Fruit Tree That Stops Children in Their Tracks

There are plants that need explaining, and then there is the Peanut Butter Tree. Hand a child a ripe fruit from Bunchosia argentea and watch their face — the smell hits first, then the flavour, and the reaction is invariably the same: delighted disbelief that a tree could produce something that tastes so much like the contents of the jar in the kitchen cupboard.

It is one of the finest plants you can put in a children’s foraging garden, and it earns that place on novelty alone before you’ve even considered its other virtues.

Fast, Prolific and Easy

The Peanut Butter Tree fruits within two to three years and produces reliably once established, bearing small bright yellow flowers through spring and summer that develop into olive-sized fruits ripening from green through orange to red. The soft, fig-like flesh delivers that extraordinary peanut butter flavour with a fruity edge — best eaten fresh off the tree, though it makes excellent jam and preserves if you can beat the birds to it.

Which brings us to the wildlife angle. Birds find the ripe red fruits irresistible, making this a generous addition to any garden designed with wildlife in mind. Pick the fruits while still orange and let them ripen on the kitchen counter if you want to secure the harvest for the household — or leave them for the birds and enjoy the activity they bring.

In the Garden

Growing to around three to four metres as a garden shrub in tropical conditions, the Peanut Butter Tree forms a broad, attractive canopy of glossy bright green leaves that earns its place ornamentally even between fruiting seasons. It thrives in the tropical and warm subtropical garden in full sun to part shade, needs regular moisture while establishing, and is unfussy once settled.

A conversation-starting, wildlife-feeding, child-delighting tree that also produces genuinely delicious fruit — it is difficult to think of a better argument for a spot in the tropical food garden.