Tree of the Week: Beefwood so named for its red sap and wood
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Coast Beefwood -- Casuarina stricta
From a little distance the coast beefwood looks like a feathery pine tree. Cone-like fruits on female trees heighten that impression. But close up, the long green ‘needles’ turn out to be small, segmented twiglets, whose one-quarter-inch-long pieces may be pulled apart at the joints, just like the familiar horsetail plant. The common name for this Australian native comes from the red sap and reddish hardwood; the tree is also known as drooping she-oak.
Casuarinas are tough, fast-growing trees that take seacoast, poor soil and windy conditions, but some species such as the river she-oak, C. cunninghamiana, and especially the horsetail tree, C. equisetifolia, become aggressively invasive where introduced in moister climates and kill off surrounding vegetation with their abundant litter. Symbiotic bacteria in their root nodules fix nitrogen for the trees to use.
The coast beefwood is an evergreen tree that reaches 20 to 35 feet tall and may become as wide. As a street tree it may be pruned into whatever shape fits the space. The bark is gray, rough and furrowed, but not deeply so. A whorl of inconspicuous little triangular leaves, looking like tiny teeth, surrounds each joint, but the green twiglets have taken over the leaves’ photosynthesis function. The number of leaf teeth can be used to distinguish the species: about 11 for the coast beefwood and seven for the horsetail tree. Male and female flowers grow on different trees. Male flowers are dangling catkin-like spikes. They produce such abundant brown pollen while in bloom that the whole tree looks rusty at that time. In contrast, the female trees stay green looking; they produce dark woody cone-like fruits about an inch in size. The tree is drought resistant and takes most any soil but wants full sun.
--Peter Severynen
Thoughts? Comments?