The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Casuarina cunninghamiana
Also called River She Oak, Beefwood, Creek Oak, Fire Oak, River Oak, Cunningham's Beefwood, Horsetail Tree
River sheoak (Casuarina cunninghamiana) is a fast-growing Australian and New Guinean tree that naturally lines freshwater rivers and creeks, and is grown mainly for riverbank stabilisation and shade. It needs open sun, moist to wet soil, and room to grow to 15 to 35 m.
Casuarina cunninghamiana, commonly known as river oak, river sheoak or creek oak, is a species of flowering plant in the family Casuarinaceae and is native to Australia and New Guinea. It is a tree with fissured and scaly bark, sometimes drooping branchlets, the leaves reduced to scales in whorls of 6 to 10, the fruit 7–14 mm (0.28–0.55 in) long containing winged seeds (samaras) 3–4 mm (0.12–0.16 in) long.
This casuarina mainly grows in pure stands in open forest on the banks of freshwater rivers and streams in Australia and New Guinea.
River oak is widely recognised as an important tree for stabilising riverbanks and for soil erosion prevention accepting wet and dry soils. The foliage is quite palatable to stock.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Casuarina cunninghamiana by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
