The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Melicytus dentatus
Tree violet is a native Australian shrub, up to about 4 metres tall, with spiny branchlets and small pale yellow flowers followed by berries. It is grown mainly as a tough, hardy garden shrub in cool to mild climates.
Melicytus dentatus, the tree violet, is a shrub that is native to south-east Australia. It grows up to 4 metres high and has branchlets that are often armed with spines and have leaves that are 5 to 50 mm long and sometimes toothed. The flowers appear in spring and summer and are pale yellow, 3 to 5 mm in length, and have petals that are recurved at the tips. These are followed by pale green to purple-black, rounded berries which are 4 to 5 mm in diameter.
The berries are consumed by Cunningham's spiny-tailed skinks.
Porcupine Shrub · Melicytus angustifolius · Thick Leaved Porcupine Plant · Melicytus flexuosus · Narrow Leaved Māhoe · Melicytus latifolius · Large Leaved Māhoe · Melicytus novae-zelandiae subsp. centurionis · Coastal Mahoe · Cook Strait Māhoe · Mahoe · Whitey Wood
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Melicytus dentatus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
