Allocasuarina humilis31280650728 1e041bf884 o

''Allocasuarina humilis'', commonly known as the dwarf sheoak or dwarf casuarina, is a woody

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

of the family

Casuarinaceae The Casuarinaceae are a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants placed in the order Fagales, consisting of four genera and 91 species of trees and shrubs native to eastern Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, Malesia, Papuasia, and the Pacifi ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to the

south-west The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Description

Unlike many sheoaks which grow into trees, ''Allocasuarina humilis'' only reaches 20 cm to 2 m (8–80 in) in height. A many branched shrub, its branchlets ascend from larger branches and reach 12 cm (5 in) in length. As with other sheoaks, its foliage consists of slender green branchlets informally referred to as "needles" but more correctly termed

cladode Phylloclades and cladodes are flattened, photosynthetic shoots, which are usually considered to be modified branches. The two terms are used either differently or interchangeably by different authors. ''Phyllocladus'', a genus of conifer, is name ...

s. The cladodes are segmented, and the true leaves are tiny teeth encircling each joint. It can be dioecius or monecious. The reddish-brown male flower spikes are between 6 and 18 mm long and the warty cones are cylindrical, about 12 to 22 mm in length and 10 to 17 mm in diameter.

Taxonomy

Originally described as ''Casuarina humilis'' by German naturalists

Christoph Friedrich Otto Christoph Friedrich Otto (4 December 1783 – 7 December 1856) was a German gardener and botanist. He was born in Schneeberg, Saxony. From 1805 to 1843 he was inspector of the Botanical Garden in Berlin. Together with Albert Gottfried Dietrich ...

and

Albert Gottfried Dietrich Albert Gottfried Dietrich (8 November 1795 – 22 May 1856) was a German botanist born in Danzig. Dietrich was curator at the Botanical Garden in Berlin and was an instructor at the institute of horticulture at Berlin-Schöneberg. From 1833 to ...

in 1841 from a specimen cultivated in Berlin Botanical Gardens, the dwarf sheoak was transferred to the new genus ''

Allocasuarina ''Allocasuarina'' is a genus of trees in the flowering plant family Casuarinaceae. They are endemic to Australia, occurring primarily in the south. Like the closely related genus ''Casuarina'', they are commonly called sheoaks or she-oaks. Wi ...

'' by botanist

Lawrie Johnson Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, FAA, (26 June 1925 – 1 August 1997) known as Lawrie Johnson, was an Australian Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic botany, botanist. He worked at the Royal Botanic Garden ...

in 1982.Johnson, L.A.S. (1982), Notes on Casuarinaceae II. Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens 6(1): 7
JSTOR
/ref> The species name is the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

adjective ''hǔmǐlǐs'' "on - " or "close to the ground" (''hǔmus''). A 2003 molecular study of the family Casuarinaceae showed the dwarf sheoak and the horned sheoak ('' A. thuyoides'') to be sister taxa, and form a clade with '' A. thuyoides'', '' A. microstachya'', karri oak ('' A. decussata'') and western sheoak ('' A. fraseriana''), all from Western Australia.

Distribution and habitat

''Allocasuarina humilis'' is found across southwest Western Australia, from the Murchison River in the north, to the south coast, where it extends eastwards to Israelite Bay. It grows on sand, sand over

laterite Laterite is both a soil and a rock type rich in iron and aluminium and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas. Nearly all laterites are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content. They develop by ...

, gravel, or clay.

Cultivation

''Allocasuarina humilis'' adapts readily to cultivation. Versatile, it tolerates a wide range of soils, including those with some alkalinity, and prefers a sunny aspect. Tolerant of some exposure to coastal conditions, it is also planted for erosion control and as a windbreak. Unlike many Australian native plants, it is relatively tolerant of phosphates to some degree in cultivation.

References

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q923947 humilis Rosids of Western Australia Fagales of Australia