From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
Also bauple nut, bush nut, Queensland nut. A creamy white, tender nut from the macadamia tree, Macadamia ternifolia, originating in Queensland, Australia. Its nuts were eaten by the Aborigines long before the Europeans came to the continent. It was not until after 1850 that European settlers discovered that the nuts were edible. The tree was named in honor of the Australian naturalist John Macadam, but today it's most often associated with Hawaii, where it was introduced in the 1890s.
