ARAUCARIA 



Araucaria, Jussieu, Gen. PL 413 (1789); Bentham et Hooker, Gen. PL iii. 437 (1880); Masters, 



Journ. Linn. Soc. {Bot.) xxx. 26 (1893). 

 Dombeya, Lamarck, Diet. ii. 301 {non Cavanilles) (1786). 



Tall evergreen trees, with naked buds and coriaceous leaves, which are widest 

 at their bases and spirally arranged on the shoots.^ Usually dioecious. Male flowers 

 in catkin-like masses, solitary or in fascicles at the ends of the branchlets ; anthers 

 numerous, with a prolonged connective, from which hang six to fifteen pollen sacs. 

 Female flowers terminal, composed of many scales spirally arranged in a continuous 

 series with the leaves, there being no obvious distinction between the seed-scale and 

 the bract ; each scale bears one ovule attached to the scale along its whole length. 

 Cones globular, composed of imbricated wedge-shaped scales thickened at the apex. 

 Seeds, one on each scale and adnate to it, flattened and without wings. 



The genera Araucaria and Agathis constitute the tribe Araucarineae, which are 

 distinguished from the other Coniferae by having a single ovule on a simple scale. 

 In Agathis the ovule is free from the scale, while in Araucaria it is united with it. 

 Cunninghamia, which was considered by Bentham and Hooker and by Masters to 

 belong to this tribe, is now generally classed with the Taxodineae ; in it each scale 

 bears three ovules. 



There are about ten species of Araucaria, inhabitants of South America, Australia, 

 New Guinea, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and Norfolk Island. Araucaria 

 Cunninghami has been reported several times as growing in the open air in England; 

 but in some cases it is evident that Cunninghamia sinensis was the tree in question, 

 while in other cases small plants were referred to which were speedily killed by the 

 cold of our winters.^ Araucaria imbricata is the only species which is hardy in this 

 country. There are fine specimens of some of the other species in the Temperate 

 House at Kew, viz. Araucaria Bidwilli, 48 feet high ; Araucaria excelsa, 48 feet ; 

 Araucaria Cunninghami, 47 feet ; and Araucaria Cookii, 30 feet. 



1 Araucaria Bidwilli has the leaves also spirally arranged, but by twisting on their bases they assume a pseudo- 

 distichous appearance. 



* In a letter in the Gardeners' Chronicle, May I, 1869, Mr James Barnes, then gardener at Bicton, states, in reply to a 

 suggestion that the tree there might be Cunninghamia., that it was really Araucaria Cunninghami, and that it had attained a 

 height of 36 feel, with a diameter of branches of 28 feet, in a sheltered plantation in that favourable locality. But this tree 

 was no longer living when I visited Bicton in 1902. (H. J. E.) 



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