Eumundi Quandong Elaeocarpus eumundi

Eumundi quandong grows upright and tight, holding a near columnar habit without any help from the secateurs. The foliage is the reason to plant it: leathery, dark and slightly wavy, with every flush of new growth coming through in bronze and copper that sits against the older leaves for weeks. Small fringed cream bells hang below the branches and are followed by blue fruit that birds work over. It is a screening tree, used along boundaries and in the gap between two houses.

A subtropical screen that needs its water

It comes out of wet subtropical forest in south east Queensland and northern New South Wales, and it performs in full sun or part shade in similar coastal and near coastal climates. Growth is moderate to fast in warm weather with moderate, steady water. Give it soil improved with organic matter, mulch it thickly, and set plants about 1.5 m apart for a continuous screen line. In exposed inland or frost prone gardens, choose something else, because cold dry wind burns the new bronze growth before it has hardened off. Coastal gardens from Sydney north suit it well, and it holds in warm sheltered pockets further south. Shade from a neighbouring building is tolerated, though the screen will be thinner on that side.

The failure mode is letting it dry out while young. This is not a plant that quietly waits out a dry spell. It browns along the leaf margins, drops its lower foliage and opens gaps at the base of the screen, which is exactly where you wanted density. Water deeply through the first two summers and keep the mulch topped up.

Which quandong for which gap

Against hard quandong, Eumundi is the narrower and more upright of the two, while hard quandong builds a broader, rounder head and takes clipping and coastal wind better. Against blueberry ash, Eumundi is denser and quicker to close into a solid screen, where blueberry ash is the lighter, more open plant grown for its flower and its blue berries. Pick Eumundi for a narrow side boundary in a warm coastal garden, hard quandong for a clipped hedge or a windy site, and blueberry ash for a feature near a path. The bronze new growth is the one thing the other two cannot match, so if the screen runs past a path or a window, that flush is worth weighing. All three sit in natives.

Holding the column

Trim lightly after each growth flush has hardened, usually once in spring and once in late summer, taking the tips rather than cutting into bare old wood, which is slow to reshoot. If a screen is running away at the top, reduce the leaders gradually over two seasons instead of topping the whole line in one go. Feed in early spring and again in midsummer with a controlled release fertiliser formulated for natives, water it in, and keep a mulch ring around each plant. Yellowing on alkaline soils responds to iron chelate. Clipped plants need feeding and watering more often than unclipped ones, since every trim pushes growth that has to be supported.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 8 sizes, from 250mm up to 1000L, priced from $199.00 to $8399.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Every size here is established stock rather than a starter plant, so this line is intended for immediate effect rather than for growing on. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to Australian native trees.