confronting vegetation: Dacrydium araucarioides

The collapse of global credit markets means it's time to finish blogging a series of especially odd plants from New Caledonia. 

Dacrydium araucariodes is an example of one of the Southern Hemisphere's two big conifer families, the podocarps, "pretending" to be the other, the araucarias.  Like other araucarias, the foliage is made of hard, rather spiky scales.  They're pressed against the stem (as though imitating yet another conifer family, the cypresses) but they're unmistakably like araucarias in their stiff and rather plastic-like texture. 

Especially odd are the brown tips.  In texture, they look like dead foliage, but their position suggests an imitation of Araucaria pollen cones.

As with some other plants here, they are most interesting when dying, tending to be more white than brown. In dead foliage, the scales take on a mottled texture that suggest a reptilian agenda.

Comments

[Teresa Gilman]

"Reptilian agenda"....nice. It also looks a bit like rope. Interesting investigation, Jarrett. I'm enjoying this.

Teresa

[Denis Wilson]

Hi Jarrett
Interesting genus. Certainly had me fooled -looks exactly like Aurucaria. Presumably they have weird fruit similar to Podocarpus?

Amazing what plants can do, when left alone on an island for 60 million years, (or so).

Denis

[Jarrett]

Denis. I never saw a Dacrydium with podocarp 'fruit' or any other reproductive organs for that matter. They must be very ephemeral. That seems to often be the case with the podocarp family, which is part of why I've always had trouble getting an instinctive feel for this family in the way that's possible for many others.