desert raisin

— The botanist Peter Latz of Alice Springs in the arid center of the continent, who grew up with and learned firestick tactics from the Arrernte Aborigines, estimates that they got about one-third of their food from firestick management of the land. He personally fancies a kind of desert raisin, a Solanum relative of the potato and tomato, which pops up after the burning off of spinifex. "Bloody good tucker!" says he.