A thank you to David M. aka petrichor@Flickr of Sydney, Australia for submitting today’s photograph (original | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). David’s weblog, dedicated mostly to plants (and plant photographs) of Australia is here: Kipili.com.
Billardiera scandens is a native of eastern Australia, where it is commonly known as apple berry, common appleberry, apple dumpling or snotberry. As you might guess with its apple-related common names, the ripe fruits are indeed edible. It is most often an evergreen climbing vine or groundcover, though will sometimes form a small shrub. The genus Billardiera is endemic to Australia, though most species occur in the west.
For today, we’ll do a link round-up:
- Billardiera scandens from the Growing Native Plants pages of Australian National Botanic Gardens
- the New South Wales Flora Online account of Billardiera scandens
- Billardiera scandens from Sustainable Gardening Australia
- Wikipedia’s entry on apple berry
- Billardiera scandens via the Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants

Great photo. I appreciate how he also captured the vine clinging to the stalk of another plant. Now, I must arrange a trip to Austrailia!
I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’m going to anyway. To what plant characteristic or feature does the common name “snotberry” refer?
lovely picture thank you daniel
was this vine plant taken to the
new world apple dumpling sounds like
old english i like warm apple dumpling
with heavy cream on a cold night
david m web site and blog is ever so good
still hot in florida hopefully a little cooler
in the offing
I’m not certain about the reason for the snotberry name – maybe one of the Australian BPotD readers will know.
So nice to see yet another plant for Australia. Very fine photograph.
Thank you,
Margaret-Rae