Search results
Apr 22, 2022 · The Walter Hill tree, planted in 1858 in Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens, is one of the very few macadamia trees that has survived extensive clearing for agricultural and urban development along Brisbane’s creeks and rivers.
May 12, 2022 · Walter Hill tree leads restoration of Brisbane's lost macadamias. 12 May 2022. Macadamias used to grow wild along Brisbane’s creeks and rivers, but very few remain. The Macadamia Conservation Trust has located only ten trees from Brisbane’s original macadamia population.
Australia’s greatest botanists, with Walter Hill the Superintendent of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, collected nut specimens and in 1858 described and named them Macadamia.
You can visit one of the first macadamias planted in the new settlement of Brisbane at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. Planted in 1858 by Walter Hill, the first superintendent of the Gardens, the tree is still healthy and producing nuts. Macadamia nut industry . The earliest attempts to farm Macadamias date from the 1870s at Rous Mill near Lismore.
- Description
- Cultivation and Processing
- Production
- Uses
- History
- Referencesisbn Links Support Nwe Through Referral Fees
Proteaceae, the family to which Macadamia belongs, is a taxon of flowering plants in the order Proteales. Mainly restricted to the Southern Hemisphere, it is a fairly large family, with around 80 genera but fewer than 2000 species. Members of Macadamia are small to large evergreen trees growing to 2 to 12 meters (6 to 40 feet) tall. The leaves are ...
The macadamia tree is usually propagated by grafting, and does not begin to produce commercial quantities of nuts until it is 7 to 10 years old. However, once established, a tree may continue bearing for over 100 years. Macadamias prefer fertile, well-drained soils, a rainfall of 1,000 to 2,000 millimeters, and temperatures not falling below 10°C (...
The nuts are a valuable food crop. Only two of the species, Macadamia integrifolia and Macadamia tetraphylla, are of commercial importance. The remainder of the genus possess poisonous and/or inedible nuts, such as M. whelanii and M. ternifolia; the toxicity is due to the presence of cyanogenic glycosides. These glycosides can be removed by prolong...
Food
Macadamias are highly nutritious nuts. Although high in fat (73-80% is fat), this is largely the monounsaturated or "good" type of fat (80 percent of the fat is monounsaturated), making macademia nuts as acceptable as olive oil in one's diet (Holmes 1994; Bender and Bender 2005). Macadamias have the highest amount of beneficial monounsaturated fats of any nut. They also are a good source of iron, calcium, phosphorus, niacin, and vitamin B1 (thiamine), and protein (9 percent), and a source of...
Oil
Kernels may be ground and processed to make macadamia nut oil. Macadamia oil is prized as a skin care product, containing approximately 22 percent of the Omega-7 palmitoleic acid (FRCNF 2008), which makes it a botanical alternative to mink oil, which contains approximately 17 percent. This relatively high content of "cushiony" palmitoleic acid plus macadamia's high oxidative stability, make it a desirable ingredient in cosmetics, especially skincare.
Other uses
Kernels that are not useful as food or for oil are often used as animal feed, while the shells and other waste products, such as a wood substitute in coffee roasting, organic waste for gardening, mulch for the trees, or chicken litter (Holmes 1994). The trees are also grown as ornamental plants in subtropical regions for their glossy foliage and attractive flowers. Macadamia nuts are often fed to Hyacinth Macaws in captivity (Csaky 2001). These large parrots are one of the few animals, aside...
For thousands of years before European settlement, the aborigines ate the native nut that grew in rainforests of eastern Australia. One of these nuts was called gyndl or jindilli (Macadmaia integri...
Csaky, K. 2001. The hyacinth macaw. Bluemacaws.org. From Parrots46 (November 2001): 26-31. Retrieved October 8, 2008.Federal Research Centre for Nutrition and Food (FRCNF), Institute for Lipid Research. 2008. Seed oil fatty acids. German Centre for Information and Documentation in Agriculture (ZADI). Retrieved Oc...Garg, M. L., R. J. Blake, and R. B. H. Wills. 2003. Macadamia nut consumption lowers plasma total and LDL cholesterol levels in hypercholesterolemic men. Journal of Nutrition133: 1060-1063. Retriev...Hansen, S. R. 2002. Macademia nut toxicosis in dogs. ASPCA. Reprinted with permission from the April 2002 issue of Veterinary Medicine. Retrieved October 8, 2008.Jul 22, 2022 · The first domesticated macadamia is claimed to be a tree in the Brisbane City Botanical Gardens planted in 1858 by Walter Hill, then superintendent of the Gardens (who also worked at Kew from 1843 to 1851), now registered with the National Trust (Hardner 2016: 1412).
No-one knows how old macadamias can grow. The oldest known tree is the Walter Hill tree planted in 1858 in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens (pictured). This is a magnificent tree, still growing and producing nuts.
