Belah

Other Common Name:

Black Oak

Status:

Australian native.

Plant Description:

Tree from 10-12 m tall with finely fissured, scaly, grey-brown bark and long, jointed, slender, wiry, ribbed, grey-green, branchlets with tiny 1 mm long teeth (reduced leaves) in whorls of 9-20.

Plants are either male or female. Male flowers in elongated spikes, 1-3 cm long, with alternating tooth-like bracts. Female flowers in globular to ovoid heads on short lateral branchlets. Fruit of pale yellow-brown to dull grey, winged seed contained in cones, 10-22 mm long and 11-15 mm long with valves well extended from the cone body.

Habitat:

Usually found growing with Slender Cypress-pine (Callistris gracilis) in open woodlands on sandy rises in the north-west of Victoria but is reported to have moderate salinity tolerance. Also found extensively in western NSW and inland SA and WA.

Comments:

The names, Belah and Black Oak, have also been applied to Casuarina cristata, with some confusion over the scientific names of the two species. Casuarina cristata is a tree of central to eastern New South Wales and south-east Queensland. Differs from Swamp Sheoak (Casuarina obesa) in that its reduced leaves (teeth) are generally less than 12/whorl and spreading or recurved and its branchlets are more or less covered in hairs. Produces a very dense wood suitable for fencing, fuel, construction and wood-turning.