2432

ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM.

PART 111.

Commercial Statistics. The price of plants, in the London nurseries, is twoguineas each.

Genus VI.

ARAUCA'RIA Ruiz et Pav. The Araucaria . Lin. Syst. Dioe'ciaMonadelphia.

Synonymcs. Eut&ssa Sal., Colymbfea Sal., DombSya Lamb., Cupr£ssus Forst the SouthernPine.

Derivation. From Araucanos , the name of the people in whose country Arauckria imbricata growsii) Chili.

Description, Sfc. Magnificent evergreen trees, natives of South America ,Polynesia, and Australia ; one of them, the Araucaria imbricata, as hardy inthe climate of Britain as the cedar of Lebanon .

J l.A. imbrica'ta Pav. The imbricate-/eae«Z Araucaria, or Chiti Pine.

Identification. Pav. Diss. in M£m. Acad. Reg. Med. Mat., 1. p. 197.; Willd. Sp. PI., 4. p. 850.;

Ait. Hort. Kew., 5. p. 412.; Lamb. Pin., ed. 2., No. 52.; Laws. Man. , p. 395.

Synonymcs. A. Bombay/ Rich. M£m. sur les Conif., p. 86., Lindl. in Penn. Cyc.; Plnus AraucariaMol. Sag. sulla Stor. Nat. del Chili, p. 182.; Colymbda quadrifaria Salisb in Linn. Trans., 8. p. 315.;Dombdyrt chilensis Lam. Encyc. ; Pino de Chili, Span.', Peghuen in the Andes ; Sir JosephHanks’s Pine.

The Sexes. There is a tree at Kew which bore female catkins in 1836; and a male plant at Boyton,which blossomed in the same year.

Engravings. Lamb. Pin., ed. 2., L 56. and 57.; Rich. Mdm. sur les Conif., t. 20. and 21.; and ourfigs. 2286. to 2293. Fig. 2287. is a cone or female catkin in a young state, from Lambert; fig. 2292.is a specimen of the female tree at Kew ; fig. 2291. is a portion of the male tree with the full-grown catkin, from Lambert’s Monograph j and fig. 2238. is the full-grown female cone ; all toour usual scale, that is, a sixth part of the natural size.. Fig. 2286. is a portion of a cone of thenatural size. Fig. 2290. a. is a seed with the scale and wing of the natural size, and b is the kernel;and./?#. 2289. is a leaf of the natural size.

Spec. Char. Leaves in eights, imbricated, ovate-lanceolate, with per-sistent mucros. (Pav.) A tree, growing to the height of 150 ft.; a nativeof the Cordilleras, in Chili. Introduced in 1796, and flowering from Sep-tember to November.

Description. Flowers dioecious. — Male. Catkin dipsacus- (teasel-) shaped,ovate-cylindrical. Scales numerous, sessile, closely imbricated round a com-mon conical axis; filament-like, obovate, somewhat woody ; with an oblongreflexed point. Anthers numerous, oblong, 2-celled; connate a little belowthe points of the scales, afterwards dependent; free, at first adpressed to thescales, afterwards, having shed their pollen, divaricate. — Female. Catkinovate. Scales numerous, wedge-shaped, 2-flowered. Germen wedge-shaped,compressed in the two opposite sides. Style none. Stigma 2-valved, callous,thick : exterior valve ovate-acuminate, larger, concave, with a linear indexedpoint; interior smaller, somewhat linear, obtuse, erect. Pericarp: conesphaerico-ovate; scales connivent, coriaceous and woody, wedge-shaped,terminated by a long awl-shaped point, 2-seeded. Seed: nut wedge-shaped,terminated at the apex by a short, callous, marginal wing, bluntly tetragonalat the base; afterwards gibbous, compressed, with opposite sides : tegumentcoriaceous. Nucleus of the same figure. (Pavon Dissert, in Mem. Acad. Reg-Med. Matrit.,i. p. 197., as quoted by Lambert.) Cone from 8in. to 84in.broad, and from 7 in. to in. long ; seed in. long, and ^ in. broad.

This is a very remarkable tree, the female of which, according to Pavon, isabout 150ft. high; while the male is seldom more than 40ft. or 50ft. high.The trunk is quite straight, and without knots, with a strong arrow-like leadingshoot, pushing upwards. It is covered with double bark, the inner part ofwhich, in old trees, is 5 in. or 6 in. thick; fungous, tenacious, porous, andlight; and from it, as from almost every other part of the tree, resin flows ingreat abundance : the outer bark is of nearly equal thickness, resembling cork