The Bunya Nut…a strange and ancient seed..and a perennial food crop for humans and animals

The bunya nut of the Bunya Pine is a seed from the large disintegrating cone the tree produces. Growing to a weight of up to 10kg, it has been a valuable food crop of Australian Aboriginals for millennia, and is still eaten by local people of all nationalities to this day. The seeds are boiled in salt water or sometimes, boiled in the water from boiled 'corned meat' for flavour. A good friends mother would place the boiled nuts in the casserole dish or oven pan with the roast of the day whilst cooking, and the meat juices would be absorbed by the bunya nut, providing delicious flavours.

The tree could solve part of our global food shortage problems, being a perenial food crop(of high food value) that after 14 years, will bear an annual crop with zero human care or input for hundreds of years(if protected and not cut down). It also has the added bonus of locking up or sequestering carbon and not adding to ground water/ocean pollution as annual crop fertilisers and pesticides do.

Old Dry Bunya Nut Seed Heads

A seed and it's casing. This one has started to sprout, ready for planting.

 Old Seed Heads

Many massive Bunya Pine trees were cut down by the QLD Government to speed settlement in the late 1800's, but a last great stand of these trees in their natural setting can be seen at the Bunya Mountains National Park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunya_Mountains_National_Park

A fascinating fact is that the Bunya is Monoecious, pollinating itself(unlike it's other close relatives that produce delicious edible seeds too, the Monkey Puzzle Tree from Chile(Araucaria Araucana) and Parana Pine from Brazil(Araucaria Angustifolia), which need both male and female trees to fruit(Dioecious). The Parana Pine is Critically Endangered (IUCN 3.1).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_angustifolia


All three trees germinate seed via the cryptogeal process. An underground tuber is created from a downward growing shoot. When the moisture and conditions are just right, the tuber sends up a seedling and a tree grows…..magic!!

Tubers I grew-