CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANI DEGLI ANTELMINELLI (1281-1328), duke of Lucca, was by birth a Lucchese, and by descent and training a Ghibelline. Being exiled at an early age with his parents and others of their faction by the Guelphs, then in the ascendant, and orphaned at nineteen, he served as a condottiere under Philip IV. of France in Flanders, later with the Visconti in Lombardy, and in 1313 under the Ghibelline chief, Uguccione della Faggiuola, lord of Pisa, in central Italy. He assisted Uguccione in many enterprises, including the capture of Lucca (1314) and the victory over the Florentines at Montecatini (1315). An insurrection of the Lucchese having led to the expulsion of Uguccione and his party, Castruccio regained his freedom and his position, and the Ghibelline triumph was presently assured. Elected lord of Lucca in 1316, he warred incessantly against the Florentines, and was at first the faithful adviser and stanch supporter of Frederick of Austria, who made him imperial vicar of Lucca in 1320. After the battle of Mühlbach he went over to the emperor Louis the Bavarian, whom he served for many years. In 1325 he defeated the Florentines at Altopascio, and was appointed by the emperor duke of Lucca, Pistoja, Volterra and Luni, and two years later he captured Pisa, of which he was made imperial vicar. But, subsequently, his relations with Louis seem to have grown less friendly and he was afterwards excommunicated by the papal legate in the interests of the Guelphs. At his death in 1328 the fortunes of his young children were wrecked in the Guelphic triumph.

Niccolò Machiavelli’s Life of Castruccio is a mere romance; it was translated into French, with notes, by Dreux de Radier in 1753. See Niccolò Negrini, Vita di Castruccio (Modena, 1496); Winkler’s Castruccio, Herzog von Lucca (Berlin, 1897); also Gino Capponi’s Storia di Firenze, and G. Sforza, Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli in Lunigiana (Modena, 1891); S. de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes (Brussels, 1838).

CASTRUM MINERVAE (mod. Castro), an ancient town of the Sallentini in Calabria, 10 m. south of Hydruntum, with an ancient temple of Minerva, said to have been founded by Idomeneus, who formed the tribe of the Sallentini from a mixture of Cretans, Illyrians and Italian Locrians. It is also said to have been the place where Aeneas first landed in Italy, the port of which he named Portus Veneris. The temple had lost some of its importance in Strabo’s day.

CASUARINA, a genus of trees containing about 30 species, chiefly Australian, but a few Indo-Malayan. The long whip-like green branches are longitudinally grooved, and bear at the nodes whorls of small scale-leaves, the shoots resembling those of Equisetum (horse-tail). The flowers are unisexual; the staminate are borne in spikes, each flower consisting of a central stamen which is surrounded by two scale-like perianth-leaves. The pistillate are borne in dense spherical heads; each flower stands in the axil of a bract and consists of two united carpels flanked by a pair of bracteoles; the long styles hang out beyond the bracts, and the one-chambered ovary contains two ovules. In the fruit the bracteoles form two woody valves between which is a nut; the aggregate of fruits resemble small cones. Pollen is transferred by the wind to the long styles. The pollen-tube does not penetrate the ovule through the micropyle but enters at the opposite end—the chalaza. This anomaly was discovered by Dr M. Treub (see Annal. Jardin Botan. Buitenzorg, x. 1891), and is associated with a peculiar development of the ovule, and an increased number and peculiar form of the embryo-sacs (nacrospores). Treub proposed to separate Casuarina as a distinct group of Angiosperms, and suggested the following arrangement:—

Angiospermae{ Porogamae
}Dicotyledons.
Monocotyledons.
Chalazogamae (Casuarina).

The names of the two subdivisions recall the manner of entrance of the pollen-tube. More recent investigations, chiefly by Nawaschin and Miss Benson, on members of the orders Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Juglans and Ulmus, showed a recurrence in a greater or less degree of the various anomalies previously observed in Casuarina, and suggest that the affinity of Casuarina is with these orders of Dicotyledons.

The wood is very hard, and several species are valuable timber trees. From a fancied resemblance of the wood to that of the oak these trees are known as “oaks,” and the same species has different names in different parts such as “she-oak,” “swamp-oak,” “shingle-oak,” “river-oak,” “iron-wood,” “beef-wood,” &c.