Allocasuarina nana

Dwarf She Oak
Blue Mountains, Australia
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Rosids
Order:	Fagales
Family:	Casuarinaceae
Genus:	Allocasuarina
Species:	A. nana
Binomial name
Allocasuarina nana (Sieber ex Spreng.) `L.A.S.Johnson
Synonyms
Casuarina nana

Allocasuarina nana, commonly known as the Dwarf She-Oak, is a small plant found in eastern Australia. Often seen around one metre tall, it grows in exposed heathlands, ridges, clifftops on sandstone based soils. It is found on the coast and tablelands, south of the Cudgegong River near Mudgee.

The fruiting cones have a mostly smooth and tessellated surface, around 20 mm long and 12 mm wide. Branchlets are very short, less than 8 cm long, the habit is a multi-stemmed spreading low shrub, forming in dense colonies. The specific epithet nana is from Latin, referring to the dwarf size of this small plant. ^[1]

References

1. Les Robinson - Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney, ISBN 978-0-7318-1211-0 page 151

The habitat of the Dwarf She Oak is heathland on exposed sandstone plateaux such as here in the Blue Mountains, Australia.