Cones. Australian Plant Image Index, photo: Murray Fagg, Calperum, near Renmark, SA

Male cones. Australian Plant Image Index, photo: Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, ACT

Tree. Australian Plant Image Index, photo: Murray Fagg, Calperum, near Renmark, SA

Common Name

Belah, Muurrgu

Family

Casuarinaceae

Notes

Tree to 20m tall.  Leaves reduced to scales sheathing the joints between the stem sections.  Male and female flowers on different plants.  Flowers tiny (less than 3mm across), cream to yellow or red to brown, with 0 petals. Male flower groups catkin-like, at the ends of the branchlets, female flowers clustered in heads at the ends of short side branchlets.

Differs from Casuarina pauper in that the green articles are somewhat waxy and occasionally hairy. 

Differs from Casuarina obesa in that there are 8-13 teeth per article, the cones are 10-16mm in diameter with several obvious striations, and the seeds are 5.5-10.5mm long.

Description and photograph of tree (as Casuarina cristata ssp. cristata) (page 207) and line drawing of cone (Fig. 41a, page 208) in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales

PlantNET description:   http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Casuarina~cristata