Allocasuarina verticillata
species of plant
Allocasuarina verticillata, commonly known as drooping sheoak, is a species of flowering plant in the family Casuarinaceae and is endemic to south-eastern Australia. It is a small dioecious tree that has drooping branchlets up to 400 mm (16 in) long, the leaves reduced to scales in whorls of nine to thirteen, the mature fruiting cones 20–50 mm (0.8–2 in) long containing winged seeds (samaras) 7–12 mm (0.3–0.5 in) long.
Description
Allocasuarina verticillata is a small dioecious tree that typically grows to a height of 4–10 m (13–33 ft), has fissured bark, and the penultimate branchlets are woody. The branchlets are up to 400 mm (16 in) long, the leaves reduced to spreading teeth 0.7–1.2 mm (0.03–0.05 in) long, usually arranged in whorls of nine to thirteen around the branchlets. The sections of branchlet between the leaf whorls are 15–40 mm (0.6–2 in) long, 0.7–1.5 mm (0.03–0.06 in) in diameter but broader at the end near the teeth. Male flowers are arranged in spikes 30–120 mm (1–5 in) long, with about 2.5 to 4 whorls per cm (per 0.4 in), the anthers 1.2–2.5 mm (0.05–0.1 in) long. Female cones are sessile or on a peduncle up to 10 mm (0.4 in) long, and the mature cones are cylindrical to barrel-shaped, 25–50 mm (1–2 in) long and 17–30 mm (0.7–1 in) in diameter, containing dark brown, winged seeds (samaras) 7–12 mm (0.3–0.5 in) long. Flowering occurs in all months.
Taxonomy and naming
Drooping sheoak was first formally described in 1788 by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who gave it the name Casuarina verticillata in Encyclopédie Méthodique, Botanique from a tree grown in the Jardin du Roi. In 1982, Lawrie Johnson transferred the species to Allocasuarina as A. verticillata in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4732995. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1788 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Allocasuarina verticillata” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.