Everything about The Araucariaceae totally explained
The
Araucariaceae are a very ancient family of
conifers. They achieved maximum diversity in the
Jurassic and
Cretaceous periods, when they existed almost worldwide. At the end of the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs became extinct, so too did the Araucariaceae in the northern hemisphere.
There are three genera with 41 species alive today,
Agathis,
Araucaria and
Wollemia, all derived from the
Antarctic flora and distributed largely in the
southern hemisphere. By far the greatest diversity is in
New Caledonia (18 species), with others in southern
South America,
New Zealand,
Australia and
Malesia, where
Agathis extends a short distance into the
northern hemisphere, reaching 18°N in the
Philippines. All are
evergreen trees, typically with a single stout trunk and very regular whorls of branches, giving them a formal appearance. Several are very popular ornamental trees in
gardens in subtropical regions, and some are also very important
timber trees, producing
wood of high quality. Several have edible seeds similar to
pine nuts, and others produce valuable
resin and
amber. In the
forests where they occur, they're usually dominant trees, often the largest species in the forest; the largest is
Araucaria hunsteinii, reported to 89 m tall in
New Guinea, with several other species reaching 50-65 m tall.
The
petrified wood of the famous
Petrified Forest east of
Holbrook, Arizona are
fossil Araucariaceae. During the Upper (Late) Triassic the region was moist and mild. The trees washed from where they grew in seasonal flooding and accumulated on sandy delta mudflats, where they were buried by silt and periodically by layers of volcanic ash which mineralized the wood. The fossil trees belong generally to three species of Araucariaceae, the most common of them being
Araucarioxylon arizonicum. Some of the segments of trunk represent giant trees that are estimated to have been over 50 meters tall when they were alive.
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