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, Dict. 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.[1] Usually diœcious. 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 Araucarineæ, which are distinguished from the other Coniferæ 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 Taxodineæ; 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.[2] 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.
- ↑ 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 1, 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 feet, 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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