Allocasuarina paludosa, commonly known as swamp she-oak[1] or scrub sheoak,[2] is a species of flowering plant in the family Casuarinaceae and is endemic to south-eastern continental Australia. It is a monoecious or dioecious shrub that has branchlets up to long, the leaves reduced to scales in whorls of six to eight, the fruiting cones long containing winged seeds long.
Allocasuarina paludosa is a spreading, monoecious or dioecious shrub that typically grows to a height of . Its branchlets are more or less erect, up to long, the leaves reduced to erect or spreading, scale-like teeth long, arranged in whorls of six to eight around the branchlets. The sections of branchlet between the leaf whorls are long and wide. Male flowers are arranged in spikes long, with 7 to 9 whorls per centimetre (per 0.39 in.), the anthers long. Female cones are sessile or on a peduncle up to long, the mature cones cylindrical to oval, long and in diameter, the winged seeds dark brown to black and long.[3] [4]
This she-oak was first formally described in 1826 by Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel who gave it the name Casuarina paludosa in Systema Vegetabilium, from an unpublished description by Franz Sieber.[5] [6] In 1989 Lawrie Johnson transferred the species to the genus Allocasuarina as A. paludosa in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.[7] The specific epithet, (paludosa) means "marshy, swampy or boggy".[8]
Allocasuarina paludosa grows in heath and in poorly drained soils near swamps at the edge of woodland on the coast and nearby tablelands of New South Wales south from Broken Bay, through southern Victoria to the far south-east of South Australia.