Allocasuarina luehmannii

Location & distribution maps

Phylogeny & links to associated information

Wikipedia links:       Angiosperms > Eudicots > Rosids  > Fagales > Casuarinaceae > Allocasuarina  luehmannii

Other links:     

Plant  information

Common name:               Buloke 

• Also, bull-oak 

• The Wiradjuri people of NSW use the name Ngany to refer to the species

Conservation status:   unknown

Etymology:   

Flowers:                  

• It is dioecious with male and female flowers on separate plants

• Flowers in spring

Fruit:                         

Leaves:         

• The cladodes are 8 to 22 mm long with 10 to 14 teeth

• They are sometimes waxy, of slightly greater diameter near their apex than their base

Stem & branches:      

Roots:         

Habit:        

• The evergreen tree typically grows to a height of 10 to 20 m

Habitat:   

• It grows on a range of soil types, mainly sandy loams, and is usually found on lower parts of the landscape

• It tolerates acid, alkaline and moderately saline soils

Distribution:                  

•  Native to Australia 

• The species occurs across a vast region of eastern and southern Australia, mainly north and west of the Great Dividing Range, within the Murray-Darling Basin, and within the states of NSW, South Australia and Victoria

• Its extent of occurrence has been greatly depleted by clearing for cereal cropping and pasture development

Additional notes:     

•  It is moderately to long-lived, usually over 15 years with a moderate growth rate

• The Shire of Buloke in Victoria, Australia is named after this tree species

• It is an important food resource for the endangered southeastern subspecies of the red-tailed black cockatoo in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, where some remnant stands are threatened by farming practices 

• Taxonomy

  • The species was first formally described as Casuarina luehmannii in 1900 by the botanist Richard Thomas Baker in the paper On two new species of Casuarina in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of NSW

  • It was subsequently reclassified in the Allocasuarina genus by Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson in 1985 in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens

• Aboriginal uses

  • The Wiradjuri people of NSW use the timber and resinous sap to make a range of tools and other implements, including weapons such as boomerangs and clubs

  • Wiradjuri people also value the species due to its ability to attract many animals that are food sources, such as possums and birds

• Hardness

  • It is cited as having the hardest wood in the world, with a Janka hardness of 22,500 N, however, The Wood Database gives it a Janka hardness of only 16,600 N 

  • This is based upon a single data source and may not give the best representation of all testing and data available

  • Consequently, with as many data points taken into consideration as possible, Australian buloke ranks at #21 overall on the poster Worldwide Woods, Ranked by Hardness

  • For more information, please consult the video discussion, Quest for the Hardest Wood in the World

Sources of information:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocasuarina_luehmannii (2023)