The story of Diploglottis campbellii is rooted in the subtropical rainforests of the Northern Rivers and Tweed, where the species has grown for generations on Bundjalung Country before ever entering Western botanical records.
At Tintenbar in 1892, field botanist William Baeuerlen made one of the earliest documented scientific collections of the tree. Then, in 1918, R.A. Campbell collected further material from the Tweed River district. Seeds from Campbell's collection reached Sydney, where botanist Edwin Cheel grew the species at his Ashfield home and photographed the cultivated plants in the years that followed. Cheel formally described Diploglottis campbellii in 1923, naming the species in Campbell's honour.
Its connection to the Tweed ultimately became part of the region's civic identity. The distinctive seed pod of the Small-leaved Tamarind appears above the shield on the Tweed Shire Council coat of arms alongside the Blue Knob Orchid. More than a century after those early collections, mibany-mibany remains an extraordinary living link between Bundjalung Country, the rainforests of the Northern Rivers and the botanical history of Australia.
