Eupomatia laurina, known as Bolwarra or sometimes Native Guava or Copper Laurel is a shrub to small tree, often seen between 3 and 5 metres tall. However larger specimens may attain a height of 15 metres and a trunk diameter of 30 cm. Native to eastern Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, from as far south as Nowa Nowa in the state of Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

 and as far as north as Cooktown in tropical Queensland and also New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

. It is a primitive flowering plant, usually growing as an understorey in rainforest

Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...

 or wet sclerophyll

Sclerophyll

Sclerophyll is the term for a type of vegetation that has hard leaves and short internodes . The word comes from the Greek sclero and phyllon ....

 forest.

Leaves are glossy, oblong-elliptic, from 7-12 cm long. The globose to urn-shaped edible yellow-green fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is 15-20mm in diameter and bears from the branches and trunk. Germination from fresh seed commences after around three weeks and is complete after five weeks, with a high level of germination. Cuttings are not advised as a method of regeneration.

The sweet, aromatic fruit is used as a spice-fruit in cooking, being included in beverages, jams

Jams

Jams is a line of clothing produced by Jams World. Jams shorts, a popular clothing item in the 1960s and 1980s, were closely associated with the surf scenes in California and Hawaii.-History:...

 and desserts. It is best used in combination with other ingredients that compliment its strong flavor, and hence should be considered one of the Australian spices

Australian spices

Australian herbs and spices were traditionally used by Aborigines, especially to flavour food in ground ovens. The term "spice" is applied generally to the non-leafy range of strongly flavoured dried Australian bushfoods. They mainly consist of aromatic fruits and seed products although Australian...

.

In cultivation E. laurina is frost

Frost

Frost is the solid deposition of water vapor from saturated air. It is formed when solid surfaces are cooled to below the dew point of the adjacent air as well as below the freezing point of water. Frost crystals' size differ depending on time and water vapour available. Frost is also usually...

 sensitive and prefers a protected, semi-shaded site. It can be propagated from seed or cuttings. Cutting propagated trees produce fruit after two years. Seedlings take four to six years to fruit.

There is also two other related species endemic to Australia, E. bennettii

Eupomatia bennettii

Eupomatia bennettii, known as the Small Bolwarra is a shrub found in sub-tropical rainforest in eastern Australia. Sometimes seen in moist gullies dominated by eucalyptus trees. Found growing north of the Nambucca River....

, or small bolwarra and E. barbata, or northern small bolwarra.