Allocasuarina verticillata
Drooping She-oak
Drooping She-oak
From: Flora in Australia
Wikipedia links: Angiosperms > Eudicots > Rosids > Fagales > Casuarinaceae > Allocasuarina verticillata
Other links:
Common name: Drooping Sheoak
Conservation status: unknown
Etymology:
x
Flowers:
Male spikes are from 3–12 cm long, with 2–4 whorls per cm and anthers 1–2.5 mm long
Female inflorescence are often located on older branches (towards the inner of the tree)
Each female flower consist of one ovary (with two fused carpels, although only one fully develops) and two styles after fertilisation
The styles are red in colour, giving the overall inflorescence a red colour
The plant flowers all year round
Fruit:
The whole structure then becomes woody, developing into a cone
The cones are cylindrical to barrel-shaped, longer than broad, sessile or on peduncle to 10 mm long
The body of the cone being 20–50 mm long and 17–30 mm in diameter
The valves are in several rows, sometimes extending well beyond cone body, broadly acute to acute, and often pointed
The winged seeds are from 7 to 12 mm long and very dark brown
Leaves:
Leaves are reduced to small teeth at the end of nodes
The teeth (8–)9–13, are spreading, not overlapping and about 1 mm long
Stem & branches:
The bark is fissured and the branchlets droop
The branchlets are up to 40 cm long, with internodes being from 10 to 40 mm long and 0.7–1.5 mm in diameter
Broader at the end near teeth
Generally densely pubescent in the furrows
Ribs slightly rounded and a minutely roughened keel
Roots:
It is a nitrogen fixing tree
Habit:
It grows as a small tree with a rounded habit
It is a dioecious tree from 4 to 10 m tall with woody penultimate branchlets
Habitat:
x
Distribution:
It is a native tree of southeastern Australia
It occurs in the ACT, NSW, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria
Additional notes:
Taxonomy
Originally collected in Tasmania and described as Casuarina verticillata by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1786
It was moved to its current genus in 1982 by Australian botanist Lawrie Johnson
Use
The 1889 book The Useful Native Plants of Australia records common names of the plant included "Shingle Oak," "Coast She-oak," " River Oak," " Salt-water Swamp Oak" and was called "Worgnal" by the Indigenous people of the Richmond and Clarence River areas of NSW
It also records that, "In cases of severe thirst, great relief may be obtained from chewing the foliage of this and other species, which, being of an acid nature, produces a flow of saliva—a fact well-known to bushmen who have traversed waterless portions of the country
This acid is closely allied to citric acid, and may prove identical with it
Children chew the young cones, which they call 'oak apples'
Ecology
On Kangaroo Island, it is the preferred food item of the Glossy Black Cockatoo, which holds the cones in its foot and shreds them with its powerful bill before removing the seeds with its tongue
Sources of information: