Casuarinaceae - Beefwood family

Dioecious, less often monoecious trees with drooping Equisetum like branchlets. Flowers clustered in unisexual inflorescences with alternating whorls of bracts. Male inflorescences spicate, solitary and terminal. Female inflorescence spherical or ovoid, axillary towards the end of woody branches. Fruit a dark-coloured samara.

Worldwide: 4 genera and 95 species, Indomalesia, Australia and W Pacific.

Mozambique: 1 cultivated genus and 4 cultivated taxa.