Australian Native Spices: Lemon Myrtle, Mountain Pepper, Wattleseed, Native Mint and Finger Lime

One Australian leaf has been described as “more lemon than lemon.”¹ It’s lemon myrtle, and it’s one of five native Australian flavors on this page. The others: a berry that tastes sweet for a second, then hits with a sharp heat that fades fast; a roasted seed with notes of coffee and chocolate; a native mint; and a lime packed with caviar-like beads. Here’s what the sources say about each.

At a glance

Lemon myrtle

Lemon myrtle is a shrub in the myrtle family. Kew gives its native range simply as Queensland and lists nowhere it’s been introduced.³ Katzer describes it as a rare plant, limited to Queensland and considered endangered, and notes it’s been cultivated since the early 1990s.¹ You’ll sometimes read that it has gone wild across Asia, North America and Europe, but Kew’s records don’t back that up.

Flavor. The leaves are rich in essential oil, typically 4 to 5%, and that oil is almost all citral (90 to 95%), in its two forms, neral and geranial. Katzer quotes the description “more lemon than lemon” and calls the taste very intense, pleasant and warm.¹ It belongs with lemongrass and lemon verbena among the lemon-scented herbs.

Uses. Katzer lists poultry, seafood and herbed vinegar, and notes that Australian cooks often use lemon myrtle leaves in place of kaffir lime leaves in Southeast Asian recipes. It’s also big in tea, desserts and baking. You may hear that it won’t curdle dairy because it has no acidity. That’s plausible, but no source we found has tested it. See our lemon myrtle profile.

Two relatives, anise myrtle (Backhousia anisata) and cinnamon myrtle (Backhousia myrtifolia), are also grown, mainly for essential oils.

Mountain pepper (Tasmanian pepper)

Mountain pepper, also called Tasmanian or native pepper, is a shrub of the temperate southeast. Kew gives its native range as southeastern New South Wales to Tasmania,⁴ and Katzer says it’s found mostly in Tasmania but also grows in Victoria and New South Wales.² Despite the name, Kew puts it in the Winteraceae family.

Flavor. The dried berries look like black peppercorns in size and color. They taste sweet for a second, then hit with an intense pungency that fades fast. The heat in both berries and leaves comes from polygodial.²

Uses. Use the berries whole or crushed, and the powdered leaves work too. Katzer names typically Australian dishes like kangaroo steaks and emu burgers, and says meat is commonly marinated with crushed berries. Use it where you’d use black pepper, but taste first. Its heat is sharper and quicker.

Two stories get repeated a lot that we couldn’t trace: that the plant was brought to Cornwall in the early 20th century and became known there as “Cornish pepper”, and that it was traditionally used to preserve food.

Wattleseed

Wattleseed is the roasted, ground seed of certain Australian acacias. The Royal Society of Victoria names Acacia victoriae, the elegant wattle, as the most common edible species.⁵ The raw seed is extremely hard and has to be roasted and ground before you can eat it. These days it’s dried and roasted much like coffee. Warndu, an Aboriginal-owned food business, describes the aroma as roasted coffee, sweet spice, raisin and chocolate, and lists ice cream, sorbet, mousse, cheesecake and whipped cream among its uses, along with bread. Traditionally, women milled the seed between flat grinding stones into flour for cakes or damper cooked on coals. See our full wattleseed profile and wattleseed substitutes.

Native mint

Native mint, Mentha australis, is a true mint of the genus Mentha, in the mint family, Lamiaceae. Kew lists it as native to New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, but not Western Australia, and as introduced in New Zealand’s North Island.

You’ll see it called “river mint” and linked to the Murray River, and read that it was traditionally used with kangaroo and other game. Those claims get repeated widely, but none of the sources we reviewed support them. Use it as you would other strong mints like spearmint or peppermint. See types of mint.

Finger lime

Finger limes are native to the rainforests of the border ranges of southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales. Kew gives the same range, southeastern Queensland to northeastern New South Wales.

The fruit. It’s shaped like a finger, 6 to 12 cm long, and the pulp is made of separate juice vesicles that look like caviar, often called “lime caviar”. The fruit comes in a wide range of colors, including green, yellow, purple and pink to bright red. Unripe fruit tends to taste bitter.

Uses. According to the NSW government’s growers’ guide, the fresh fruit is used mainly as a garnish for seafood, and the pulp goes into sauces, jams and jellies. Cooks also spoon the tart beads over oysters and into salads and cocktails. The same guide put total Australian production at about 10 tonnes in 2008/09, roughly half of it exported to Europe and Asia.⁶ That figure is old now, and we couldn’t find a newer official one.

Related pages

• Lemon myrtle
• Wattleseed and wattleseed substitutes
• Lemongrass and lemon verbena
• Mint
• The master list of herbs and spices