Isle of Pines
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Sun 13 Oct 2013 12:15
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The pines in question are actually araucarias,
close relations of the Chilean monkey puzzle tree Araucaria
araucana occasionally seen growing as an ornamental tree in the UK.
You may also be familiar with the Norfolk Island pine, A. heterophylla,
which too is seen in UK gardens. Araucarias are only very distantly related
to the true pines of the genus Pinus, but they are tree of a very old
lineage indeed and may truly be described as living fossils. There are 19
species extant in the world today, of which no fewer than 13 are endemic (found
nowhere else) to New Caledonia. The rest live in Australia, New Guinea and South
America, showing their origin as an inhabitant of Gondwana, the ancient southern
supercontinent. Unlike all the other Pacific islands which are of recent,
volcanic, origin, New Caledonia is also a remnant of Gondwana and has been
isolated for between 60-85 million years (the dinosaurs were wiped out at the
end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago). Fossil araucarias from the age of
dinosaurs are almost indistinguishable from modern living trees, so closely
related that they are all in the same genus. Vast forests of araucarias used to
exist around the world, and there is a respectable school of scientific thought
holding that the long necks of the giant sauropod dinosaurs like the famous
Diplodocus were an adaptation to enable grazing of araucaria leaves -
and likewise, that the habit of many araucarias of losing lower branches leaving
a bare trunk is an adaptation to prevent grazing by dinosaurs.
Be that as it may, Cook named where we are as the
Isle of Pines on 4 September 1774 as he sailed past (he couldn't find a way
through the reefs so didn't land), and to this day there are large thickets of
araucarias. Here are some of them;
 These trees are Cook's Pine, A.columnaris.
They are about 20-30m tall and a favourite nesting tree for ospreys
(surprisingly, the same species as in the UK except here they're common as muck
and nest even in saplings 3m off the ground). I think they're really beautiful,
and part of an environment utterly different to the other Pacific islands we've
visted.
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