Allocasuarina acutivalvis
Allocasuarina acutivalvis is a species of flowering plant in the family Casuarinaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a dioecious shrub to small tree that has erect branchlets, the leaves reduced to scales in whorls of 10 to 14, the fruiting cones long containing winged seeds long.
Description
Allocasuarina acutivalvis is a dioecious shrub to small tree that typically grows to a height of. The branchlets are erect, up to long, the leaves reduced to erect, scale-like teeth long, arranged in whorls of 10 to 14 around the branchlets. The sections of branchlet between the leaf whorls are long and wide. The flowers on male trees are arranged in spikes resembling a string of beads long, the anthers long. The female cones are covered with fine, white hairs when young, and are sessile or on a peduncle up to long. Mature cones are long and in diameter, the samaras black or dark brown and long.Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1876 by the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Casuarina acutivalvis in his Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae. It was reclassified in 1982 into the genus Allocasuarina as A. acutivalvis by Lawrie Johnson in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. The specific epithet, means "sharply pointed lobes".In the same journal, Johnson described two subspecies of A. acutivalvis, and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Allocasuarina acutivalvis L.A.S.Johnson subsp. acutivalvis has articles long with 10 to 14 teeth long, the cone body long and wide.Allocasuarina acutivalvis subsp. prinsepiana L.A.S.Johnson has articles long with 11 to 13 teeth long, the cone body long and wide.