Quandong
Santalum acuminatum
It feeds through other plants' roots: no suitable host, no fruit — and ordinary fertilizers poison it.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Red
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Feeding
- All-purpose balanced
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- April
- Mar–Apr Bud Break
- Apr–Jun Flowering
- Jun–Aug Fruit Set
- Aug–Oct Harvest
- Oct–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Winter Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Winter Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 16 ft 5 in
- In-row spacing
- 16 ft 5 in
- Between rows
- 16 ft 5 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 20–26 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
It is a hemiparasite: the roots form haustoria onto the roots of a neighbouring host plant and take water and nitrogen from it. A quandong planted on its own in clean ground will not thrive, so it is set out beside a nitrogen-fixing companion.
The habit is Quandong’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Frost damage Frost damage while the plants are young
- Phosphorus deficiency Phosphorus toxicity from ordinary fertilizers
- Poor pollination Poor fruit set without enough host roots to draw on
- Root competition where the host plants are too aggressive
Acacia, Native grasses, Eremophila, Grevillea
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com