The Araucaria
Very different in habit and appearance from the lightsome gingko is the araucaria or puzzle monkey, but, like the former, it is a survival of the vegetation that flourished in the carboniferous era, when it had to compete with giant ferns, cycads, and horse-tails, and attained its utmost development in the Jurassic landscape. Of the ten known species of araucaria, all indigenous only in the southern hemisphere, only one is hardy in Great Britain—A. imbricata—which forms forests on the mountains of southern Chile.
This tree was first brought to England in 1795 by Archibald Menzies, who, visiting Chile with Captain Vancouver, sowed some araucaria nuts on board ship and brought home six live seedlings. It was not till 1844, however, that any fresh supply of seeds reached this country, when William Lobb, collecting for the firm of Veitch, secured a large quantity. The quaint character of the tree, the readiness with which the seeds germinated, and its thorough adaptation to British soil and climate soon caused it to be widely distributed, so that at this day there is no tree with which people are more familiar than the puzzle monkey. At the same time, there is no tree which has suffered so much from injudicious planting among inappropriate surroundings. It is a creature demanding broad light and free, pure air; and I know of no more dismal object in the world of plants than an araucaria stuck down in front of a suburban villa, stifled with smoky deposit, retaining a despairing grip of life, whereof the only visible sign is the green tips of its poor blackened branches. It is treatment such as this which has caused the araucaria to lose favour with British planters. To realise what this tree is capable of in our hands, one has but to visit the Earl of Stair’s grounds at Castle-Kennedy and stroll down a wide grassy avenue, two hundred yards in length, bordered on either side by araucarias over 50 feet high (see plate at page 232).
Effective in a different fashion must be the araucaria grove at Beauport, Sussex, which I have not seen. Here a number of these trees were planted about fifty years ago, and allowed to grow in forest canopy, the inner ones clearing their boles naturally. The largest of these, measured by Dr. Henry in 1904, was 74 feet high, with a girth of 7 feet 9 inches.
Again another effect. On the west shore of Loch Fyne, united to the mainland by a narrow neck of shingle, is Barmore Island, a grassy, rocky pile, treeless save for a solitary araucaria which some freakish hand has planted many years ago high on the northern slope. The impression received from this lonely foreigner is very enduring. (Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean the physical impression, which would be distinctly disagreeable; but the mental one, which is most pleasing.)
Araucaria timber is said to be like good deal, but smoother and heavier. Like most primitive types of vegetation, the trees are of separate sexes, though exceptionally a tree may be found bearing male and female flowers. The male inflorescence is like a large, brown, pendant catkin, 4 or 5 inches long; the huge female cones take two years to ripen, when they open, and each discharges 200 or 300 large seeds, 1 to 1½ inch long. These seeds are freely produced in nearly all parts of Britain; self-sown seedlings spring up where the undergrowth permits them; and as an article of food the kernels are not to be despised when cooked as chestnuts.
The araucaria is one of many South Chilian plants which relish the climate of western Britain and Ireland. The character of climate in these widely-separated regions is curiously similar, though from diametrically opposite causes. In Chile abundant moisture arises from the afflux of a cold ocean current upon a warm coast; in the British Isles a warm ocean current flows upon the colder land.
Footnotes
1 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, Introduction, p. xv.
2 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, ii. 334.
3 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, ii. 328.
4 Sylva, chap. iii. section 2.
5 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, by H. J. Elwes and Augustine Henry, vol. i. p. 20.
6 Holly.
7 Sycamore.
8 Probably the ash.
9 The summer of 1914 was noted for a similar abundance of seed on the wych elm.
10 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 1881.
11 British Forest Trees, 1842, p. 208.
12 British Forest Trees, p. 229.
13 A Traveller’s Notes, by J. H. Veitch, p. 105.
14 Selby’s British Forest Trees, p. 141.
15 Since writing this I have received from a friendly correspondent a bottle of elder-berry wine, and must confess that I conceived no desire for a second bottle.
16 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 34.
17 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, ii. 411-417.
18 A “dole” (in charity) is merely a dialectic variant of “deal.”
19 One of these, a sycamore at Ellon, was blown down in 1873.
20 Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. ii. p. 363.
21 David Sharp in Cambridge Natural History, Vol. vi. p. 583 (1899).
22 Professor Sargent says, “sometimes 250 feet high.”
23 The Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 60, by John Lowe, M. D., 1897.
24 Ibid., p. 59.
25 With all the trees that thou hast tended,
Thy brief concern is well-nigh ended,
Except the cypress—that may wave
Its hateful symbol o’er thy grave.
(Horace, Odes, ii. 14.)
26 At Monreith I have many trees thirty feet high and more, raised from seed gathered at Fiesole, near Florence, in 1878; but young plants raised from seed gathered at Gravosa, in Dalmatia, in 1907, were all killed by frost, indicating that the cypress has acquired a hardier constitution in Tuscany than those growing on the hot limestone of Dalmatia.
27 Silva of California, p. 145.
28 Professor Jepson states that “stands of 125,000 to 150,000 feet, board measure, to the acre, are not uncommon,” op. cit. p. 151.
29 It is nowhere truly wild, and is a relic of a very ancient flora. Geological evidence shows that it is the last survivor of an ancient family, which flourished during Secondary times, and can even be traced back to the Primary rocks. In Mezozoic times this genus played an important part in the arborescent flora of north-temperate regions. Fossil remains, almost identical with the present existing species, have been found, not only in this country and North America, but also in Greenland.—A Naturalist in Western China, by E. H. Wilson, ii. 45.