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46 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
inner 5 or 6 inches thick, fungous, tenacious, porous, and light, from which as from
almost all other parts flows resin in abundance ; the outer is of nearly equal thickness,
resembling cork cleft in various directions, and equally resinous with the inner."
I may say that the district spoken of is not really part of the Andes at all, but
a coast range separated from the Andes by a wide tract of low country, mostly
covered with forest. And as regards the bark, though I did not see any old trees
felled in Chile, the bark of trees of 40-50 years old felled in England does not show
bark at all approaching the thickness described. Neither have I seen in the
districts I visited myself any trees as tall as he describes, or more than about 120
feet. He states that it is also found "juxta oppidum Conceptionis." There are
no mountains near Concepcion high enough for the Araucaria, and I think this
must be based on false information.
Don Dendariarena goes on to say that " the wood of this tree is of a yellowish
white, fibrous, and full of very beautiful veins, capable of being polished and worked
with facility. It is probably the best adapted for shipbuilding, as has been shown
by the experiments made in the year 1780, in consequence of which orders were
given to supply the squadron commanded by Don Antonio Bacaro, then at anchor
in the port of Talcahuano."
"The resin abounding in all parts of the tree is white, its smell like that
of frankincense, its taste not unpleasant. It is applied in plaster as a powerful
remedy for contusions and putrid ulcers, it cicatrises recent wounds, mitigates
headaches, and is used as a diuretic, in pills, to facilitate and cleanse venereal ulcers.
The Indians make use of the fruit of this tree as a very nourishing food ; they eat
it raw as well as boiled and roasted, with it they form pastry, and distil from it a
spirituous liquor."
Lambert says: " In a letter which I have lately received M. Pavon mentions
an important particular, not noticed in the above description, namely, that the male
tree is not above half the size of the female, and seldom exceeding 40 feet in height."
I am not able to confirm this from personal observation either in Chile or England,
and Dr. Masters 1 says that there is no reliable distinction between the male and
female tree, whilst it is said in an account of the Araucarias in the Piltdown
Nurseries 2 that the habit of the tree is no guide to the sex.
It was first described by the Abbe Molina, who called it Pinus araucana.
Ruiz and Pavon who explored parts of Chile soon afterwards sent specimens to
Europe to a Frenchman named Dombey, which were described by Lamarck under
the name of Dombeya chilensis, but the generic name he gave cannot stand because
it was previously used for a genus of Sterculiacese.
In 1795 Captain Vancouver visited the coast of Chile, accompanied by Archibald
Menzies, who procured some seeds which he sowed on board ship, 3 and succeeded
in bringing home living plants, which he gave to Sir Joseph Banks, who planted one
of them in his own garden at Spring Grove, and sent the remaining five plants to
Kew. One of these, after being kept in the greenhouse till about 1806 or 1808,
1 Card. Chron. 1 890, ii. 667. 2 Hid. 1 891, i. 342.
3 Sir Joseph Hooker, who knew Menzies personally, tells me that he took these seeds from the dessert table of the Governor.
Araucaria 47
was planted out on what is now called Lawn L, and was at first protected during
winter by a frame covered with mats. Here it grew for many years and attained
the height of 12 feet in 1836 (fide Loudon), but eventually died in the autumn of
1892 at the age of nearly 100 years. 1 This is probably the tree figured by Lambert.
The first person who gives any account of the tree in its native forests, so
far as I know, is Dr. Poeppig, whose account of the tree is printed in Companion
to Bot. Mag. i. 351-355- It did not, however, become common in cultivation
till the celebrated botanical traveller William Lobb, who was sent to South America
by the firm of Veitch, sent home in 1844 a good supply of seeds which produced
most of the finest trees now in England.
No account of his travels were, however, published, and on applying to Messrs
Veitch before I went to Chile in 1901 I was informed that his journals, which I
wished to consult, could not be found. The late Miss Marianne North was the first
English traveller who published any account of the tree in its native forests, which
she visited on her last journey in November 1884, mainly, as she says, for the
purpose of painting this tree. But, owing to the difficulty and danger at that time
of reaching the Andes, she went to the coast range of Araucania, called Nahuelbuta,
which lies between the sea and the town of Angol, in the same district where the tree
was probably first discovered. After describing her ride up from Angol to the
mountains, which are here covered with a beautiful vegetation, among which
Gunnera, Lapageria, Embothrium, Fuchsia, Buddleia, Alstroemeria, and many other
favourite plants in English gardens are conspicuous, she says: 2
" The first Araucarias we reached were in a boggy valley, but they also grew
to the very tops of the rocky hills, and seemed to drive all other trees away, covering
many miles of hill and valley ; but few specimens were to be found outside that
forest. The ground underneath was gay with purple and pink everlasting peas, and
some blue and white ones I had never seen in gardens, gorgeous orange orchids, and
many tiny flowers whose names I did not know, which died as soon as they were
picked, and could not be kept to paint. I saw none of the trees over too feet
in height or 20 in circumference, and, strange to say, they seemed all to be very old
or very young. I saw none of the noble specimens of middle age we have in
English parks, with their lower branches resting on the ground. They did not
become quite flat at the top, like those of Brazil, but were slightly domed like
those in Queensland, and their shiny leaves glittered in the sunshine, while their
trunks and branches were hung with white lichen, and the latter weighed down
with cones as big as one's head. The smaller cones of the male trees were shaking
off clouds of golden pollen, and were full of small grubs; these attracted flights of
bronzy green parrakeets, which were busy over them. Those birds are said to be
so clever that they can find a soft place in the great shell of the cone when ripe,
into which they get the point of their sharp beak, and fidget with it until the whole
cone cracks and the nuts fall to the ground. Men eat the nuts too, when properly
cooked, like chestnuts. The most remarkable thing about the tree is its bark,
1 Cf. Kew Bull. 1893, p. 24.
2 Marianne North, Recollections of a Happy Life, 2nd ed. ii. 323, 324 (1892).