Aboriginal groups showed the tree and nuts to the explorers and botanists. In early contact with European settlers Macadamias were a major item of trade in exchange for tobacco, tommy axes and rum.
Alan Cunningham may have been the first explorer/botanist to record Macadamias near current day Beenleigh.
Baron Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Mueller (1825-1896) , and Walter Hill (1820-1904), first director of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, collected the yet undescribed plant in 1857 along the Pine River in the Moreton Bay area in Queensland, Australia.
Walter Hill erroneously believed the hard shell had to be removed to allow them to germinate and be planted. He gave the job to a young assistant and told him not to taste them as they were very bitter and probably poisonous.
Ferdinand von Mueller, a German-Australian physician and botanist decided to name the genus after a colleague. His name was Dr. John Macadam. Von Mueller was a noted chemist and physician who encouraged macadamia nut cultivation.
Mueller, who received his doctorate from the University of Kiel, Germany, came to Australia in 1847 upon being advised to go to a warmer climate.
Macadamia was introduced to Hawaii by W. H. Purvis in 1881, by the Jordan brothers in 1892, and by the Territorial Board of Agriculture between 1891 and 1895.
Macadamia nuts trees were imported to Hawaii for cultivation in the 1880s where it was first used for reforestation and as an ornamental plant and later in 1930; its commercial potential for dessert nut was developed by university of Hawaii. Nowadays, most macadamia plantations thrive in Hawaii.
Ernest Van Tassel, of the Hawai’i Macadamia Nut Company, began commercial planting of the nuts in 1921. After facing many adversities in growing healthy trees, Van Tassel was finally able to begin processing the nuts in 1934.
Discovery of macadamia nut in Australia
