Casuarina cristata
Casuarina cristata, commonly known as belah or muurrgu, is a species of flowering plant in the family Casuarinaceae and is endemic to inland eastern Australia. It is a tree with fissured or scaly bark, sometimes drooping branchlets, the leaves reduced to scales in whorls of 8 to 12, the fruit  long containing winged seeds (samaras)  long.

Description
Casuarina cristata is a dioecious tree that typically grows to a height of , has a 
DBH of up to , and often produces suckers. Its bark is finely fissured or scaly and dark greyish brown. The branchlets are often drooping, up to  long, the leaves reduced to scale-like teeth  long, arranged in whorls of 8 to 12 around the branchlets. The sections of branchlet between the leaf whorls (the "articles") are  long and  wide. The flowers on male trees are arranged in spikes  long, the anthers  long. The female cones are covered with rusty hairs when young, later glabrous, on a peduncle  long. The mature cones are usually  long and  in diameter, the samaras  long.

Taxonomy
Casuarina cristata was first formally described in 1848 by Dutch botanist Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel in his book Revisio critica Casuarinarum from specimens collected by Allan Cunningham near the Lachlan River. The specific epithet (cristata) means "crested", possibly referring to the long, pointed bracteoles on the cones. The tree is called muurrgu or murrgu in the Yuwaalaraay dialect of the Gamilaraay language around Walgett in northwestern New South Wales. Other common names include scaly-barked casuarina, scrub she-oak, billa, ngaree, bulloak and swamp oak.

Distribution and habitat
Belah is found from Clermont in central Queensland south through to Temora in southern New South Wales. It is an important component of the endangered Brigalow ecological community of inland New South Wales and Queensland. Here it is found as a dominant tree with brigalow (Acacia harpophylla), black gidyea (A. argyrodendron), bimble box (Eucalyptus populnea), Dawson River blackbutt (E. cambageana), E. pilligaensis and the smaller trees such as wilga (Geijera parviflora) and false sandalwood (Eremophila mitchellii) in open forest over mainly Cenozoic clay plains. Other plants it grows with include boonaree (Alectryon oleifolius), sugarwood (Myoporum platycarpum) and nelia (Acacia loderi). On limestone-based soils, it may have a dense understory composed of pearl bluebush (Maireana sedifolia) or black bluebush (M. pyramidata)

Ecology
Belah can reproduce by suckering from its root system, and clonal stands have been recorded. Seedlings only appear after periods of high rainfall.

References

cristata
Fagales of Australia
Trees of Australia
Flora of New South Wales
Flora of Queensland
Taxa named by Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel
Plants described in 1848