Dianella revoluta

Common Name: Blueberry Lily

Transcript of Aunty Fran Bodkin explaining the uses of Dianella Revoluta:

Dianella, it can be revoluta or caerulea or it could be any one of the Dianellas. They all grow in the Sydney region and you could eat the fruit raw or you could cook it but I like the best part of all. And the best part of all is that we use it as lipstick to attract our males and that is we would eat some fruit and it would dye our tongues blue and our lips blue. And if we saw a very attractive male we would poke our tongues out at him and that would mean we were available.

The rhizomes, that’s the base of the plant, it was cooked and cleaned and roasted before being eaten. Now, you can eat it raw but it doesn’t taste as good as if you eat it when its cooked.

The leaves were twisted and split. Well what you did really with the leaves, was you soaked them in water and then dried and then soaked them in water again then you’d split them and weave them into string and it makes it almost indestructible. So that’s the string and of course we have the most wonderful story about the Dianella revoluta, it’s a wonderful legend.