It's dry out there right now. Walking through the local woodlands and forests I see drooping leaves, whole dead limbs and dead trees, and a mass of newly fallen leaf mulch on the ground. After three years of high, sometimes overwhelmingly high, rainfall, when nature has looked so lush and flush, it's a bit of a shock. And then it's a welcome relief to come across plants that are looking completely happy and healthy.

One absolute classic in the genre is the Whalebone Tree (or Streblus brunonianus), one of the toughest and hardiest of all the local rainforest trees. It's looking absolutely fabulous right now around the place, with its glossy green pointed leaves showing barely a droop even in the sunniest spots.      

Whalebone Tree is a rainforest species, and in the Illawarra is particularly characteristic of the endangered subtropical rainforest. It might not stand out among the other trees of the rainforest at first view, but it has some quite distinctive features.

The leaves on young plants can be completely crazy-looking, long and narrow like swords or daggers. And it has separate male and female plants.

The flowers on male and female plants are quite different. And only the female plants bear the succulent yellow-orange fruit that are so attractive to many local birds (and are, incidentally, quite delicious for humans if you can find them).  

A few places you can see Whalebone Tree growing include the Ken Ausburn track near University of Wollongong, Emperor Court Reserve in Berkeley and at the Illawarra Rhododendron and Rainforest Gardens (in the upper, rainforest garden area). Keep an eye out!