Belah
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| Scientific Name: | Casuarina pauper (syn. Casuarina cristata) |  |
Other Common Name: | Black Oak | |
Status: | Australian native. | |
Plant Description: | Tree from 10-12 m tall with finely fissured, scaly, grey-brown bark and long, jointed, slender, wiry, ribbed, grey-green, branchlets with tiny 1 mm long teeth (reduced leaves) in whorls of 9-20. Plants are either male or female. Male flowers in elongated spikes, 1-3 cm long, with alternating tooth-like bracts. Female flowers in globular to ovoid heads on short lateral branchlets. Fruit of pale yellow-brown to dull grey, winged seed contained in cones, 10-22 mm long and 11-15 mm long with valves well extended from the cone body. | |
Habitat: | Usually found growing with Slender Cypress-pine (Callistris gracilis) in open woodlands on sandy rises in the north-west of Victoria but is reported to have moderate salinity tolerance. Also found extensively in western NSW, south-west Queensland and inland SA and WA. | |
Comments: | Differs from Swamp Sheoak (Casuarina obesa) in that its reduced leaves (teeth) are generally less than 12/whorl and spreading or recurved and its branchlets are more or less covered in hairs. Produces a very dense wood suitable for fencing, fuel, construction and wood-turning. | |
© The State of Victoria, 1996 - 2010.
This document was last reviewed on 05/08/2009