California GArden Archives

Growing Grounds from California Garden

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.

Reprinted From: January/February 2023 Volume 114 No. 1

Macadamia: The Money Tree

By John Blocker 

Many of our mothers have told us that money does not grow on trees. But apparently all of these mothers have got it wrong. The good news is that there is a tree that can make money. And all it requires is a little shake once a week to harvest its lucrative fruits . … This money is the macadamia tree.   —BizNews (Johannesburg, South Africa), November 12, 2019 

South Africa has become one of the largest macadamia nut producers in the world, rivaling Australia and surpassing Hawaii. In Southern California, as in South Africa, the same idea has been promoted: growing macadamias can be easy money. A few San Diegans have been successful growing the nut, and they did rake in profits from their harvests. But, even though the trees produce well in our climate, a sizable macadamia nut industry in San Diego has never taken root. 

Cultivating the Macadamia

Macadamia trees are indigenous to Australia and grow naturally in the coastal area between Sydney and Brisbane. The plant was named by Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, Director of the Royal Botanic Garden in Melbourne and a physician. He named the tree after Scotsman John Macadam, a medical practitioner and politician who became a lecturer at the Scots College in Melbourne in 1855.

Von Mueller did not know the nut is edible. Walter Hill, Director of the Brisbane Botanic Garden, believed the macadamia nut was poisonous. But the story is told that he saw a young Australian eat one in 1858 with no ill effects. Hill tried one himself and found it delicious. He soon brought the plant into cultivation, promoting it to the rest of the world. The macadamia is Hill’s most important introduction to world agriculture. He also brought into Australian horticulture sugar cane, mangos, pawpaw, tamarind and many other economic and ornamental plants.

The Brisbane Botanic Garden is located on the slopes of the Brisbane River above the docks where sailing ships offloaded their cargo. To support the Garden and to find new economic crops for Australia, Hill traded indigenous plants with the ships’ captains for exotic plants and other cargo. By the 1870s, the first macadamias transported by sailing ships were arriving in Hawaii and other ports.

Macadamias in California 

In 1879, Professor C. H. Dwinelle planted the first documented macadamia tree in California at the mouth of Strawberry Canyon on the University of California Berkeley campus.

In 1889, after completion of the Hotel del Coronado, the construction supervisor used surplus materials to build himself a house in Coronado and to plant his grounds. The historic Adella Street home is still there and so is a macadamia tree, a seedling from the original Hotel Del plantings. Marie Barnidge-McIntyre, horticulturist at the Rancho Los Cerritos adobe in Long Beach, documented this history as she took cuttings from this tree to recreate a 1931 planting by renowned landscape architect Ralph Cornell at the Los Cerritos site. Cornell may have become familiar with macadamias when he designed a landscape plan for the University of Hawaii during the late 1920s. At that time, the University was developing techniques to graft macadamias cuttings onto rootstock. Prior to this advancement, all macadamia trees were grown from seed.

D. W. Coolidge, a Pasadena nurseryman, introduced rare and unusual plants to Southern California and was a prominent member of the California Nurserymen’s Association. In the first issue of California Garden, July-August 1909, Coolidge 

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © John Blocker.

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.