Casuarina

I absolutely love casuarina trees. They give me a feeling of peace and calm. I’m not sure why but they do.

Casuarinas are found growing all over Barbados, both out in the wild and in gardens. They even make very attractive hedges. The house that we lived in when I was a child between the ages of about 5 and 12, had a wonderful casuarina hedge on two opposite sides of our front lawn that was kept at about 5 feet in height and probably 2 feet thick. It got trimmed regularly, was obviously quite old, and part of it still exists even though the house is now derelict and the grounds overgrown.

Then we moved into our newly built home “in the country”, and lo and behold, there were two casuarina trees already growing in the front yard. They are still there forty plus years later, and have just been trimmed in readiness for the hurricane season.

The “leaves” of casuarinas are more like very long (about 5 or 6 inches) pine needles in appearance. The very nondescript and almost unnoticeable flower appears at the tip of each “leaf”, the seed pods are like tiny little pine cones about three quarters of an inch in size that start out green, gradually dry out and turn brown, and then burst open to release the spores into the wind. You do see little casuarinas sprouting up all over the place.

The leaves and pine cones do make a bit of a mess in the yard and form a carpet which we always rake up, and if you step on a dried cone in your bare feet, a stream of expletives will probably follow. The cones are sometimes called “oh shite berries”.

Casuarinas do well in dry, windy and salty conditions, so they are frequently found in close proximity to the sea, and on the tops of hills where other trees would not survive. The sound of the wind blow through a casuarina is also quite unmistakable. Almost like the sound of the sea lapping gently back and forth over the sand. Casuarinas tend to get quite tall (30 - 40 feet easily) and are commonly called “Mile Trees”.