The Araucaria Tree

Above the rest

Araucaria

Cut through the trunk of the Araucaria
turned to make a nice bowl.

The araucaria tree has two types of wood in the main trunk. The lighter wood is soft much like pine and the inner columns are very hard. As you can see, the tree grows to great heights and normally sheds the lower branches as it grows. When you see an araucaria tree you will notice that it is always taller than its neighboring trees and the lower branches will be shed from the tree to the height of the surrounding trees. This is, presumably, because those branches are no longer useful to the tree since, they are no longer exposed to sunlight. The remaining branches will be long and grow horizontally to increase exposure to the sun’s rays. This long flat branch will be extremely heavy and it is supported by the hardwood in the middle of the trunk of the tree. Since I don’t have a lot of time to study down here, I will speculate that the trunk is made up of the two types of wood so that the branches have the support they need form the hard wood, and the soft wood decrease the amount of hard wood and allows the tree to grow faster and outdistance other trees in its quest for sunlight.