1 69 
CASUARINA S. 
The order of plants known as Casuarina comprises but one 
genus of very limited area viz. Casuarina. There are about 50 
species in the genus, of which most are peculiar to Australia with a 
number occurring in New Caledonia, and a -few in the Malay 
Islands. 
The Casuarinas known here by the Malay name of Ru, or 
Javanese Eru, are trees of some size, with thin cylindric jointed 
branches, and no leaves unless certain dittle teeth at each joint of the 
branchlets represent these organs. The male flowers are borne 
in slender rusty brown spikes on the branchlets and the females in 
small cones. The fruit is a small woody cone containing flat one 
winged seeds, which are drifted away by the wind when the cone 
splits, in collecting seed for growing it is necessary to gather the 
cones when ripe but before they split or the seeds are blown away 
by the wind. The cones are laid out in a dry place to split on stiff 
paper and when split the seeds can be shaken out and collected. 
Only one species is indigenous to the Malay Peninsula. Casua- 
rina eqai set /folia. This tree invariably occurs in a single line 
along the sea coast, above high water mark in sandy beaches. So 
regular is it in this that it often appears to have been planted in line. 
At Santubong in Sarawak, I have seen a line of these trees in a 
sandy spot some distance from the sea which ,has evidently receded 
from the trees, and left them some way inland. Except where 
planted one never sees these trees inland or away from the sea. 
Yet they grow very well away from the sea especially in dry exposed 
places and are frequently planted as roadside or shelter belt trees. 
There are some remarkably fine specimens by the sea at Malacca 
evidently of considerable age. 
These plants are readily grown from seed, and grow very fast. 
Notes on the cultivation of Casuarina equisetifolia, have already 
been published in the Bulletin No. IV, 1 1, 57. 
Few if any epiphytes seem able to grow on the bark, and it is 
well known that orchid planted on them never do well or live long. 
A fin^ species of Loranthus, occurs as a parasite, however, on the 
wild trees on the Pahang Coast (L, Casuarinai) . 
The Casuarina is cultivated for ornament and for fire wood (see 
Bulletin 1, 292, and also supplies a good and durable timber. At 
the end of the year its branches are often in -request for Christmas 
trees, it being the only common plant which forms a satisfactory 
substitute for the Spruce fir used at home for this purpose. The 
boughs, however, are so tfein that they require to be supported by 
thin strips of bamboo tied beneath them. 
C. sumatrana , Miq. of which a photograph is given, is a remark- 
ably handsome tree both in its young state as represented and in the 
adult state, it is a native of Sumatra and Borneo, where it grows 
in sandy woods above the sea, usually in hilly places. When young 
it has a rounded cone shaped outline, the lower branches lying on 
