BROOME, Australia (Reuters) - Flowers, leaves and other „bush tucker“ kept American tourist Robert Bogucki alive during his 40-day ordeal in Australia‘s Great Sandy Desert. But some of the fruit he probably handled could just have easily killed him in his attempt to walk an epic 800 km (500 mile) across the outback, a conservation expert said on Tuesday. Nibble on a Crabs Eye Bean (abrus precatoris) and you might die „in a matter of minutes“, said Tim Willing, a conservation officer for the West Kimberley region with the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management. The bright scarlet and black fruit of the Crabs Eye Bean is plentiful in The Great Sandy Desert this year, one of the wettest recorded this century. „I spent two weeks in the desert in May and have never seen it look so lush,“ Willing told Reuters. When Bogucki was found on Monday he had walked an estimated 350 km (214 miles) across a stretch of Australia too harsh for even traditional nomadic Aborigines to eke out an existence. Bogucki said he had found plenty of water, sometimes after digging in dry waterholes, but little food and was forced to eat flowers and leaves. Heavy rain caused by cyclones and the continental monsoon which can last for months in the north of Australia provided Bogucki with unusually plentiful water in creek beds and billabongs (water holes) in the rocky country he crossed. The same rain produced a rich harvest of good „bush tucker“ and plenty of potentially painful traps for the innocent. „The desert walnut (the fruit of a low tree) can be a good source of food. So can the bush potato (desert yam). The trick is knowing where to look and what to look for,“ said Willing. But Bogucki, who normally lives in Alaska, would have found most of the plants and flowers beyond his knowledge. The same goes for the animals. He said he saw a goanna (lizard) but was too weak to catch it. In truth, few white people can catch goannas, which range in size from a few centimetres (inches) to more than a metre (three feet) in length. Desert Aborigines know how to catch and cook goanna, but none live in the harsh country crossed by Bogucki. If the 33 year-old tourist had acquired a knowledge of bush tucker in The Great Sandy Desert he would have been looking for the Bauhinia flower or members of the Grevillea family. „The Bauhinia produces a lot of nectar,“ said Willing. „They are high in carbohydrates which would have given him energy.“ „If you get up early you compete with the honey-eaters (small birds) for the best flowers. He might also have found some wild lemon grass if he had known what to look for,“ he said. „He really was very lucky to get away with what he did. The huge rains we had left water behind and produced a good crop of flowers and fruit. He‘s lucky he tried the right ones.“