Bush coconut

The Bush coconut, or bloodwood apple, is an Australian bush tucker food, often eaten by Aborigines of Central Australia.

The bush coconut is, in fact, a combination of plant and animal: an adultpores female scale insect, Cystococcus pomiformis, lives in a gall induced on a bloodwood eucalypt (Corymbia terminalis).

The gall looks like a small, knobbly woody fruit, ranging in size from a golf ball to a tennis ball, with a milky white flesh inside upon which the insect and its male offspring feed.

Bush coconut is called Merne arrkirlpangkwerle in the Arrernte language of Central Australia. Aborigines pick them and crack them open with a rock. The Arrernte call the insect angure.