G'day again Barbara,

I just followed Bill D's link to remind myself what the current Silky Oak species is. I got a beaut list of different trees ... all using that same name.

Silky Oak Cardwellia sublimus
Silky Oak Darlingia darlingiana
Silky Oak Darlingia ferruginea
Silky Oak Darlingia spectatissima
Silky Oak Gevuina bleasdalei
Silky Oak Grevillea hilliana
Silky Oak Grevillea robusta
Silky Oak Helicia lamingtoniana
Silky Oak Lomatia fraxinifolia
Silky Oak Macadamia whelanii
Silky Oak Orites excelsa
Silky Oak Turrillia bleasdalei

A lot of these would be only known in their immediate localities. I'm pretty sure the commercial timber that I have worked with is 'Cardwellia sublimus' and this is also exported to US as 'Lacewood', which used to be the name for the wood of the Plane Tree.

The reference to Casuarina is a bit of a furphy - casuarina is she-oak, nor silky oak. The Poms were (according to some text or dictionary I read, years back) using the term 'she' in its secondary sense of 'lesser', 'weaker' or 'paler'! Obviously this was written back before "politically correct" ruled ... and by a bloke.

I will look up 'ceratopetalum apetalum' in the Encyclopaedia Botanica when I'm next near my copy and see what family 'ceratopetalum' falls in. The most prolific Australian species od hardwoods (such as Eucalyptus) fall into the Myrtaceae family, but that covers a multitude of sins.

Regards,

Bob Bolton