Ngunnawal Country

The plants here have been used and understood for thousands of years

Everything in this collection grew somewhere in Australia before it grew on Black Mountain, and people knew what it was for. This page follows the Gardens’ own Aboriginal Plant Use Trail.

Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as Traditional Custodians of the ACT and recognise any other people or families with connection to the lands of the ACT and region. We acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.

We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and we recognise that the knowledge described on this page belongs to the people who hold it, not to the institution that published a leaflet about it.

How to read this page

Everything below is drawn from material the Gardens themselves have published — chiefly the Aboriginal Plant Use Trail brochure, which states that the information used to develop it was sourced from Ngunnawal people, and which records the Ngunnawal plant names reproduced here.

Where a name or a use is recorded as Ngunnawal, this page says so and names the source. Where a use is documented across south-eastern Australia more broadly but this site cannot point at a source attributing it specifically to Ngunnawal people, it says that instead. The distinction is the whole point: an absent Ngunnawal name here means no published source this site can cite records one, not that none exists.

This is a student project. It is a pointer towards Ngunnawal knowledge and the people who hold it — not a substitute for either. The deeper body of knowledge about these plants is the community’s to share, on its own terms, and much of it is deliberately not published. The best version of this page is a ranger-guided walk with someone who can speak to it.

On the ground

The Aboriginal Plant Use Trail

A self-guided loop through the gully and rock gardens, with interpretive signs at the plants. Pick up the brochure at the Visitor Centre, or download it before you come.

Distance: 820 m loop
Time: About 30 minutes
Grade: Grade 2 — uneven in places
Access: Not wheelchair accessible

The Gardens’ trail page Find it on the map

Please do not pick or eat the plants

The Gardens ask this of every visitor, and it matters twice on this page. These are scientific collection specimens, some of them rare. And knowing that a plant was eaten is not the same as knowing how it was prepared — several plants used as food across south-eastern Australia are harmful without processing that took real expertise.

Seven plants

What these plants were for

Each of these is on the Gardens’ trail. The first three carry Ngunnawal names recorded in the Gardens’ own brochure.

Gurradjong Ngunnawal name, recorded by the Gardens

Kurrajong

Brachychiton populneus

On the trail →

Food: Young shoots eaten raw or roasted, and the jelly-like sap eaten. The seeds sit inside a boat-shaped pod, packed in fine hairs that irritate skin and have to be cleaned away first.
Fibre: Bark worked into string and rope, and from there into nets, fishing lines and dilly bags.
Water: Water drawn from the roots of the tree.

Ngunnawal name and these uses as recorded in the Gardens’ Aboriginal Plant Use Trail brochure, which describes Gurradjong as a source of food, fibre and water.

Dharaban Ngunnawal name, recorded by the Gardens

Yam Daisy

Microseris lanceolata

Food: The tubers eaten raw or roasted — a staple food for Aboriginal people across south-eastern Australia, dug with a digging stick and carried in a bag.
Why you rarely see it now: It is uncommon in the wild today. Sheep introduced from the 1830s grazed and trampled the tubers out of the grasslands where it had been abundant, which removed a staple food from Country within a generation.

Ngunnawal name from the Gardens’ trail brochure. Its status as a regional staple, and its decline under grazing, are widely documented in published south-eastern Australian plant-use literature.

Mudda Ngunnawal name, recorded by the Gardens

Snow-in-summer

Melaleuca linariifolia

On the trail →

Material: Paperbarks like this one shed bark in broad papery sheets. Across Australia that sheet material was used for wrapping food to cook, for lining and covering, and for carrying — a structural material that a tree produces as a by-product of growing.
Aromatic leaves: Melaleuca leaves are strongly aromatic, and crushed leaves from the genus are documented in medicinal use in a number of Aboriginal communities.

Ngunnawal name from the Gardens’ trail brochure. The uses described here are documented for paperbarks generally rather than attributed to Ngunnawal people by any source this page can cite.

Austral Indigo

Indigofera australis

Fishing: Leaves and roots crushed and put into a pool to stun fish and eels, so they could be taken by hand — a technique that works with the water rather than against it.
Dye: The flowers and foliage used as a source of colour.

On the Gardens’ trail. These uses are documented across south-eastern Australia; this page cannot cite a source attributing them specifically to Ngunnawal people.

Spiny-headed Mat-rush

Lomandra longifolia

Weaving: The long strap leaves split, soaked until pliable, and woven into baskets, mats, string and eel traps. This is one of the most important fibre plants in south-eastern Australia, and the weaving traditions built on it are still practised.
Food: The pale base of a leaf can be chewed — starchy, faintly sweet.

On the Gardens’ trail. Documented widely for south-eastern Australia rather than attributed here specifically to Ngunnawal people.

Native Raspberry

Rubus moluccanus

Food: The fruit eaten straight from the cane — one of the few plants on this page that needs no preparation at all.

On the Gardens’ trail. Documented as a food plant in south-eastern Australia.

Soft Tree Fern

Dicksonia antarctica

On the trail →

Food: The starchy pith from the top of the stem eaten raw or roasted in ashes, and the young fronds eaten. Available year-round in the wet gullies where it grows, which made it a reliable food when little else was.
A recorded preference: It was considered the second-best of the two tree ferns: the Rough Tree Fern, Cyathea australis, was preferred because it tasted better. Recorded preferences like that are a reminder this was a cuisine, not a survival diet.

On the Gardens’ trail. Documented for south-eastern Australia and Tasmania, including in the Gardens’ own published plant-use material.

Beyond a plant list

Knowing a plant is not the same as knowing Country

A page like this risks turning a living body of knowledge into a catalogue: seven plants, one use each, tick. What the catalogue leaves out is the part that made it work — knowing when.

Seasonal knowledge across Aboriginal Australia does not run on four European seasons. Local calendars are read off the country itself: which plant is flowering, which animal is moving, what the wind is doing. Those indicators tell you when a tuber is worth digging and when to leave it, which is the difference between harvesting a food plant and exhausting it. The Bureau of Meteorology publishes Indigenous Weather Knowledge calendars developed with communities across the country, and the Gardens link to it from their own plant-use resources.

The same applies to fire. Deliberate, low-intensity burning at the right time of year shaped the grasslands and open woodland that the first Europeans in this region described and assumed to be natural. Several plants in this collection are adapted to exactly that: a banksia whose follicles will not open until they are burnt is a plant built for a country that burns on a schedule someone was keeping.

None of that is visible in a list of plants and uses. It is worth knowing that the list is the thin end of it.

Sources and credits

Aboriginal Plant Use Trail — “Alive with discovery”, Australian National Botanic Gardens. The Gardens’ own trail brochure. It records the Ngunnawal names reproduced on this page — Gurradjong, Dharaban and Mudda — and states that the information used to develop it was sourced from Ngunnawal people. It also notes the importance of preserving the intellectual property of that knowledge. Trail page and brochure.
Aboriginal Plant Use in South-Eastern Australia, and the Gardens’ index of plant-use resources — including Daphne Nash’s Aboriginal Plant Use — NSW Southern Tablelands — prepared for the Gardens’ education programs. Australian Plant Information.
Indigenous Weather Knowledge, Bureau of Meteorology — seasonal calendars developed with Aboriginal communities. bom.gov.au/iwk.
Acknowledgement of Country follows the ACT Government’s protocol, which recognises the Ngunnawal people as Traditional Custodians of the ACT and recognises other people and families with connection to these lands. ACT Government.
Opening hours, trail distance, grade and accessibility from visit.anbg.gov.au, read 6 August 2026.