A single species can tell us much about taste, power, and the cultural choices behind how we shape landscapes. Connected to the doctoral project Making Ornamental Trees, this article reflects on the Araucaria araucana, a conifer, and the stories carried by its long journey from the Andes in South America to European gardens.
Some months ago, during a performance by the artist Neyen Pailamilla, I learned that the Araucaria araucana at the UZH Botanical Garden, Zürich, had been transplanted from the entrance of the domes to the Mediterranean garden. I was surprised, not only because the tree does not belong to a Mediterranean climate, but because it has a long history as a “standing alone rarity” and a “welcoming tree” in Europe, usually placed at the entrance of a property. This fashion, which began in the 19th century, was born from appropriation, yet it still granted a dignified position to a species with deep cultural and ecological roots in South America.
Seeds of Diplomacy and Cultural Resilience
The Araucaria araucana – Pewen in Mapuche, Monkey Puzzle in English, Chilenische Schmucktanne in German, and Araucaria du Chili in French – is a striking conifer that has barely changed since the age of dinosaurs. It grows naturally only in the Chilean and Argentinean Andes and the Chilean Coastal Range. It is adapted to low winter temperatures, snow, volcanic soils, and exposed terrains. Its first arrival in England as a germinating seed was in 1796, when it became highly desired for its rarity and hardiness. According to the story, Viceroy Ambrosio Higgins offered piñones to the naturalist Archibald Menzies at a banquet. The seeds of this tree were also moved later through political networks in the early 19th century, at a moment when Chile was seeking British recognition of independence: from Indigenous Mapuche-Pehuenche territories to Chilean authorities and, at the end of the chain, to the British Consul Christopher Richard Nugent.
As the artist Seba Calfuqueo reflects in her work, the seeds were also a tool of resistance when the newly formed Chilean republic appropriated Indigenous territories at the end of the 19th century. Imitating the colonising spirit of European empires, the new nation expanded its frontiers, breaking old agreements and networks of trade with the Mapuche. In this context, the seed became one of the main sources of food for Indigenous communities, able to be harvested directly from the forest.
Botanical gardens are powerful spaces for teaching botany, but also for reminding us of societies’ histories entwined with plants. Visual pleasure, encountered in botanical gardens, helps us approach less pleasant stories with sensitivity: stories of power, ecological strain, and the values of “civilisation” imposed on landscapes and people, both in the present and the past.
Camila Medina Novoa, born in Chile, doctoral candidate at LUS, ETH Zürich. She is a landscape architect whose work explores Plant Humanities and the entanglements between landscape architecture history and theory and the history of science, with a particular focus on practices and their material traces. She is the co-founder of the collective LOFscapes (2015) and served as the main editor of its book Landscape is not Nature (2020). During her doctoral research – supervised by Prof. Teresa Galí-Izard and Dr. Nils Güttler – she lectured on the History of Ecology at ETH Zürich and contributed to various international conferences and publications.