Araucaria (araucana) trees (left) intermingle with lenga (Magallanes oak). The araucaria is recognized as an "archetypal" tree, a living fossil that is among the earliest families of seed-bearing plants. This ancient conifer has inhabited the earth for some 200 million years – since the dawning of tree life in Gondwanaland – and emerged at the same time that dinosaurs evolved from reptiles. The tree's armor of daggerlike leaves was designed to thwart the appetite of 80-ton herbivores, allowing it to survived eons of natural predation – only to become endangered today by modern industrial humans.
The araucaria's ever-shrinking range is limited to a small region in the North Andean Patagonian Regional Eco-Corridor. Although it is protected, illegal logging occurs, and large timber companies covet the last araucaria forests. Three-fourths of those that remain are
on private lands. Publicly protected lands fall well short of what is needed to ensure this species' health and the long-term viability of its ecosystem.
The araucaria is named after the Araucani Indians, and also is known as "Pehuen" in the Mapuche Indian 
language (the Mapuche are a sub-group of the Araucani Indians). It became known as the "Monkey Puzzle
Tree" after an Englishman remarked in the 1800s that it would be a puzzle for a monkey to climb. Its rigid, tightly overlapping, dark green, needle-pointed leaves are spirally arranged on stiff, spidery branches, forming a tangled, prickly network that discourages animals from attempting to climb.
These extremely slow-growing trees are considered mature when they reach 200 years old, get their characteristic "umbrella" shape when they are 500 years old, and can live for 1,800 years. The have straight, cylindrical trunks that grow up to 8 feet wide and 185 feet tall. The female trees produce a very large cone with dozens of nuts that the Pehuenche people (a branch of the Mapuche Indians, who took their name from the tree) roasted as a staple food. When fully mature after three years, the female cones are the size and shape of a coconut and break up while still on the tree. Araucaria tree resin is used to heal wounds. Spiritually, the araucaria is the centerpiece in the altar of harvest and fertility ceremonies of the Pehuenche and Mapuche people.
