79 
“The species has been till now confounded with C. glauca, hut the bark is, 
according to Morton, scaly and not deeply furrowed, the wood is rather soft, not 
hard ; several trunks often spring up from the same horizontal rhizome, besides the 
branchlets are often thinner, the teeth in the whorl fewer and shorter, the valves in 
the fruit less high exserted, thicker, with larger seeds. 
“ Our new species comes very near C. equisetifolia in the fruits, but differs in 
foliage, and, perhaps, in hark and wood.”—(Mueller, Fragment a, x. 115.) 
Botanical Name. — Casuarina, owing to the resemblance of the branchlets 
to the feathers of the Cassowary ( Casuarius) ; lepidophloia, Greek lepis, lepidos 
(= Latin squama) a scale; phloios, the inner hark or smooth hark of a tree, hence 
scaly-bark. 
Vernacular Names. —This tree is rarely called hv any name other than its 
aboriginal one (Belah). In some districts e.g (Grenfell) it is known as “ Bull Oak,” 
hut this should be reserved for C. Luelimanni. 
In Cat. Intercol. Exh. Melb., 1806-7, p. 222, Mueller (under C. glauca ) 
calls it— 
The Desert She Oak of Victoria, in the mallee scrub, a middle-sized tree. 
The name “ Black Oak ” is in use at Mount Lvndhurst, S.A. (M. Koch). 
Aboriginal Names. —“ Belah,” or “ Belar,” is the name almost universally 
in use. At the same time, I am unable to say what tribe in Belah country used it. 
Mr. Bailey quotes Mr. Watkins as giving “Billa” in use for C. glauca by the 
Stradbroke Island (Brisbane) aborigines. It is therefore possible that Billa ” or 
“Belah” is an aboriginal name for Casuarinas in general. Sir Thomas Mitchell 
gave “ Ngeu” as the aboriginal name, in use at “ Begent Lake,” Lachlan River, for 
a Casuarina (probably the Belah). “ Gooree ” was an aboriginal name at Terry- 
hie-hie, New England, New South Wales; “Alkoo,” of Mount Lvndhurst, South 
Australian blacks (M. Koch). 
Synonym. — C. Cambagei, 11. T. Baker, Proc. Linn. Soc., N.S.W., 1899, 
p. 605. 
I have examined Mueller’s type specimens of C. lepidophloia, on the occasions 
of visits to the National Herbarium, Melbourne, and have also received specimens 
of the type from Mr. J. G. Luehmann, Curator of that, Herbarium, in 1897. These 
specimens are now in the National Herbarium, Sydney. I have also had the 
advantage of study of Belah in the field over a large area of its range. On 
Air. Baker’s description of' the Belah as C. Cambagci, in 1900, I accepted the name, 
and distributed the plant under that name for over two years, when circumstances 
led me to re-examine the plant, and I found that my earlier determination of 
C lepidophloia was correct. 
