The 19th century English botanist, Joseph Dalton Hooker, writing of Australian plants in "Flora of Tasmania", remarked although "eatable," are not "fit to eat". In 1889, botanist Joseph Maiden reiterated this sentiment with the comment on native food plants "nothing to boast of as eatables." The first monograph to be published on the flora of Australia reported the lack of edible plants on the first page, where it presented "Billardiera scandens" as, "... almost the only wild eatable fruit of the country".