Riberry Syzygium luehmannii

Riberry flushes bright pink to crimson and hardens slowly to glossy green, so the plant is rarely a flat wall of one shade. The leaves are small and narrow for a Syzygium, which gives a finer texture than brush cherry and lets it take a close clip without looking hacked about. It is a coastal rainforest tree found from the mid north coast of New South Wales up through Queensland, and it is grown here three ways at once: as a screen, as a specimen, and as a bushfood plant for its small red pear shaped fruit.

Warm coast, and shelter further south

Subtropical and warm temperate gardens suit it, from south east Queensland down the New South Wales coast, and it is grown successfully in sheltered positions in the ACT, Victoria and the warmer pockets of South Australia and Western Australia. Young plants are frost sensitive, so a cold inland garden needs to protect them through their first couple of winters. It wants soil that holds some moisture and it appreciates mulch, and it sulks where established tree roots have already taken the water, which is the usual reason a riberry planted under a big eucalypt never gets going. In full sun it stays dense; in part shade it opens up and leans towards the light. For a screen, allow 1.5 to 2 metres between plants.

You can have the hedge or the crop, not both

Riberry flowers on wood that has been left to mature, so this is the plant where the shears decide what you end up with. A specimen sheared as a formal hedge every few weeks through spring and summer will look tidy and will never fruit, because each cut removes the growth that was going to carry the flowers. If the crop is the reason you are planting it, grow it as a small tree or a loose informal screen and accept a softer outline. If you only want the hedge, clip away and treat the fruit as something you have chosen to forgo. Either way, look at what sits underneath, because a settled plant drops fruit in quantity and it will stain pale paving and clog a pool skimmer.

The one grown for its fruit

Riberry is the one in this range grown as much for the fruit as the foliage, that fruit having a tart, cranberry like flavour and being the same thing sold as a bushfood. Acmena smithii fruits too, but its white to mauve berries are mostly of interest to birds, and its real strength is a clean hedge psyllid leaves alone. Big Red carries deeper red on its new growth in a clipped hedge, but it is a hedging plant and nothing more. Take riberry when you want a fine leaved screen or a specimen that also feeds you, and give it more room than you would give a brush cherry. Larger stock is grouped in advanced trees.

Timing the cuts and the feed

Tip prune young plants through spring and summer to build the branching, then leave any harder shaping until straight after the fruit has come off, so you are not cutting away the wood carrying the next crop. Stop trimming as autumn cools, since soft growth going into a cold snap on a frost sensitive plant invites damage. Feed once the fruit is finished to help the plant rebuild, and again as growth starts the following spring, watered in both times. Keep mulch over the root zone through summer, because on this species drying out is what checks growth and drops fruit before it is ready.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 7 sizes, from 140mm up to 1000L, priced from $17.95 to $4949.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to choosing a lilly pilly.