• Submitted by: admin
• Local
• Camagüey
• Environment
• Science and Technology
• 04 / 26 / 2009

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The casuarina or Australian pine, well-known scientifically as Cassuarina equisetifolia, is a plant introduced in Cuba and abundant in the coastal dunes of the Sabinal Cay in this municipality of Nuevitas.

Due to the characteristics of this invader species of fast growth, has passed to be part of the local flora, competing with the autochthonous vegetation of the area, distinguished as coastal bushes, and moving in this way in the whole sandy coast to the north of Camagüey.

Its capacity of moving is one of the characteristics that make successful to this species of the local flora, in a changing environment like is the tropical climate.

The Cassuarina, although it lives fixed to a substrate, it can disperse its seeds to big distances by means of the air, the water or the animals, which allows it, among other things, to colonize new atmospheres and to extend its distribution range.

Many of these species have as advantage that they don't find predators neither pathogens that control them when arriving to new areas. It is known about several examples of species that behave as invaders, whether for direct competition through the water, light, nutritious or for the secretion of allopathic substances, finishing in the domain of extensive areas and causing the extinction of numerous organisms.

For all this it is common to see in the cost to the north of Camagüey to the Cassuarina or Australian pine to travel by the marine city of Nuevitas like a species more of the great green Cayman that is Cuba.

Source: Radio Nuevitas