For hundreds of thousands of years, the distinctive candelabra shape of Brazil’s Araucaria tree (Araucaria angustifolia) has defined landscapes on the southern edge of the country’s Atlantic forest. Humans have never known a world without these majestic evergreen specimens, but my latest research, conducted with colleagues in Brazil and Reading, suggests that their extinction could be just a generation or two away.
At first glance, you might mistake Brazil’s Araucaria for its sister species, the monkey puzzle tree, which is found in Chile and Argentina. But the two have inhabited South America as separate species for eons, after diverging some 28 million years ago. If you compressed those 28 million years into 24 hours, North and South America wouldn’t become one landmass until 9:30 pm. Humans wouldn’t appear until 11:45 pm. These are truly ancient plants.
Araucaria trees have been revered for as long as humans have lived in the highlands of southern Brazil. Their starchy, nutrient-rich pine nuts (known as pinhão) underpinned the diets of indigenous groups before the arrival of Europeans, especially in times of scarcity.
The trees also hold great cultural importance. For example, the funeral ritual of the indigenous Kaingang people requires Araucaria knots to keep bonfires burning, Araucaria ashes for face-paint, and a trough made from an Araucaria trunk to hold a traditional fermented honey...
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