A “Fossil Tree” That Lives Today: Araucaria (The Monkey Puzzle Tree”)
These distinctive trees may look similar to pine trees but they are only distantly related. They are not true pines. The araucaria tree is largely confined today to the Southern Hemisphere (e.g. New Caledonia, eastern Australia, New Guinea, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay), but modern-day humans have dispersed them today throughout many places in the world (there are 20 extant species). These trees are also found today in humid, subtropical Mediterranean areas. They do not like cold conditions!
During the worldwide warm times of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when the distribution of land was vastly different than from today, Araucaria trees were widespread.
Araucaria trees are up to about 80 m tall (262 feet). Their horizontally spreading branches are covered with needle-live leaves. They also have cones, and the female ones have large edible seeds, similar to pine nuts. The widely spaced branches of Araucaria are symmetrically triangular (thus very distinctive!).
Classification
Kingdom Plantae
Clades (4 of them)
Class Pinopsida
Order Araucariales
Family Arucariaceae
Genus Araucaria
Type Species Araucaria heterophylla (its common name is “Northfork Island Pine”).
Figure 1. A living example of the Araucaria tree in Southern California.
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