Casuarina Explained

Casuarina, also known as she-oak, Australian pine[1] and native pine,[2] is a genus of flowering plants in the family Casuarinaceae, and is native to Australia, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, islands of the western Pacific Ocean, and eastern Africa.

Plants in the genus Casuarina are monoecious or dioecious trees with green, pendulous, photosynthetic branchlets, the leaves reduced to small scales arranged in whorls around the branchlets, the male and female flowers arranged in separate spikes, the fruit a cone containing grey or yellowish-brown winged seeds.

Description

Plants in the genus Casuarina are dioecious trees (apart from C. equisetifolia that is monoecious), with fissured or scaly greyish-brown to black bark. They have soft, pendulous, green, photosynthetic branchlets, the leaves reduced to scale-like leaves arranged in whorls of 5 to 20 around the branchlets. The branchlets are segmented at each whorl with deep furrows that conceal the stomates. Male flowers are arranged along branchlets in spikes with persistent bracteoles, female flowers in spikes on short side-branches (effectively "peduncles") that differ in appearance from vegetative branchlets. After fertilisation, the female spikes develop into "cones" with thin, woody bracteoles that extend well beyond the cone body. The cones enclose grey or yellowish-brown winged seed known as samaras.[3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Ecology

Casuarina are attacked by a range of herbivorous insects.

Taxonomy

The genus Casuarina was first formally described in 1759 by Carl Linnaeus in Amoenitates Academicae and the first species he described (the type species) was Casuarina equisetifolia.[14] [15] The generic name is derived from the Malay word for the cassowary, kasuari, alluding to the similarities between the bird's feathers and the plant's foliage.[16]

Species List

The following is a list of Casuarina species accepted by Plants of the World Online as of April 2023:[17]

In 1982, Lawrence Johnson raised the genera Allocasuarina and Gymnostoma in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, and transferred some species previously included in Casuarina to the new genera. The species of Allocasuarina previously in Casuarina are: A. acuaria, A. acutivalvis, A. campestris, A. corniculata, A. decaisneana, A. decussata, A. dielsiana, A. distyla, A. drummondiana, A. drummondiana, A. fraseriana, A. grevilleoides, A. helmsii, A. huegeliana, A. humilis, A. inophloia, A. lehmanniana subsp. lehmanniana, A. littoralis, A. luehmannii, A. microstachya, A. monilifera, A. muelleriana, A. nana, A. paludosa, A. paradoxa, A. pinaster, A. pusilla, A. ramosissima, A. rigida, A. robusta, A. striata, A. tessellata, A. thuyoides, A. torulosa, A. trichodon and A. verticillata. The species of Gymnostoma previously included in Casuarina are G. chamaecyparis, G. deplancheanum, G. intermedium, G. leucodon, G. nobile, G. nodiflorum, G. papuanum, G. poissonianum, G. rumphianum and G. sumatranum and G. webbianum.[18]

Invasive species

C. cunninghamiana, C. glauca and C. equisetifolia have become naturalized in many countries, including Argentina, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Cuba, China, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Mauritius, Kenya, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, the Bahamas,[19] and Uruguay. They are considered an invasive species[20] [21] in the United States, especially in southern Florida[22] where they have nearly quadrupled in number between 1993 and 2005 and are called the Australian pine.[23] C. equisetifolia is widespread in the Hawaiian Islands where it grows both on the seashore in dry, salty, calcareous soils and up in the mountains in high rainfall areas on volcanic soils. It is also an invasive plant in Bermuda, where it was introduced to replace the Juniperus bermudiana windbreaks killed by a scale insect in the 1940s.[24]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: FIELD GUIDE TO IDENTIFY THE COMMON CASUARINA (AUSTRALIAN PINE) SPECIES IN FLORIDA . Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. . 2023-09-12.
  2. Web site: Casuarina glauca prostrate forms . Australian National Botanic Gardens. Australian National Biodiversity Research . 2023-09-12.
  3. Web site: Wilson . Karen L. . Johnson . Lawrence A.S. . George . Alex S. . Casuarina . Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Climate Change, the Environment and Water: Canberra . 22 April 2023.
  4. Web site: Wilson . Karen L. . Johnson . Lawrence A.S. . Wilson . Karen L. . Genus Casuarina . Royal Botanic Garden Sydney . 22 April 2023.
  5. Web site: Entwisle . Timothy J. . Walsh . Neville . Casuarina . Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria . 22 April 2023.
  6. Web site: Casuarina . Northern Territory Government . 22 April 2023.
  7. Book: Huxley, A. . 1992 . New RHS Dictionary of Gardening . . 0-333-47494-5.
  8. 2011-05-01 . Ecology and Management of Sheoak (Casuarina spp.), an Invader of Coastal Florida, U.S.A. . Journal of Coastal Research . 27 . 3 . 485 . 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-09-00110.1 . 55348868 . 0749-0208.
  9. Fisher . Nicole . Moore . Aubrey . Brown . Bradley . Purcell . Matthew . Taylor . Gary S. . Salle . John La . 2014-04-23 . Two new species of Selitrichodes (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae: Tetrastichinae) inducing galls on Casuarina (Casuarinaceae) . Zootaxa . 3790 . 4 . 534–542 . 10.11646/zootaxa.3790.4.2 . 24869885 . 1175-5334. free .
  10. Web site: Evaluating Biological Control Agents of Australian Pine : USDA ARS . 2023-07-20 . www.ars.usda.gov.
  11. Taylor . Gary S. . Austin . Andy D. . Jennings . John T. . Purcell . Matthew F. . Wheeler . Gregory S. . 2010-09-02 . Casuarinicola, a new genus of jumping plant lice (Hemiptera: Triozidae) from Casuarina (Casuarinaceae) . Zootaxa . 2601 . 1 . 1 . 10.11646/zootaxa.2601.1.1 . 1175-5334.
  12. Hodgson . Chris . Mille . Christian . CazèRes . Sylvie . 2014-03-05 . A new genus and species of felt scale (Hemiptera: Coccoidea: Eriococcidae) from New Caledonia . Zootaxa . 3774 . 2 . 152–164 . 10.11646/zootaxa.3774.2.3 . 24871412 . 1175-5334.
  13. Kolesik . Peter . Brown . Bradley T . Purcell . Matthew F . Taylor . Gary S . 2012 . A new genus and species of gall midge (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) from Casuarina trees in Australia: New gall midge from Casuarina . Australian Journal of Entomology . en . 51 . 4 . 223–228 . 10.1111/j.1440-6055.2012.00860.x.
  14. Web site: Casuarina. APNI. 21 April 2023.
  15. Book: Linnaeus . Carl . Amoenitates academicae, seu, Dissertationes variae physicae, medicae, botanicae . 1759 . 143 . 21 April 2023.
  16. Book: Quattrocchi, Umberto . CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names . I A-C . 2000 . CRC Press . 978-0-8493-2675-2 . 456.
  17. Web site: Casuarina L. . Govaerts R . Plants of the World Online . Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . 20 April 2023.
  18. Johnson . Lawrence A. . Note on Casuarinaceae II . Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens . 1982 . 6 . 1 . 73–86 . 21 April 2023.
  19. Web site: BEST Commission . The National Invasive Species Strategy for The Bahamas . BEST . Nassau, The Bahamas . March 2003 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110706162658/http://www.best.bs/Documents/bahamas_nationalstrategy.doc . 2011-07-06 .
  20. USFS FEIS: Casuarina
  21. USDA Forest service: Casuarina
  22. Web site: GISD . www.iucngisd.org.
  23. IFAS: SRFer Mapserver
  24. Web site: Casuarina (Casuarina equisetifolia) . Department of Conservation . Government of Bermuda . 2010-10-01 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100305133403/http://www.conservation.bm/casuarina/ . 2010-03-05 . dead .

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Casuarina".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.