Agathis Salisb.

Agathis belongs to the monkey-puzzle family, Araucariaceae, which includes the well-known genus Araucaria comprising about twenty species, and the monospecific, recently discovered Wollemia nobilis. Extant species of Araucariaceae have a primarily southern hemisphere distribution, mostly in Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and New Caledonia, with only two Araucaria species in South America. The fossil record, however, demonstrates that during the Mesozoic the family had a wide distribution in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Extant Agathis species are distributed in Malesia, the Philippines, New Guinea, Melanesia, Peninsular Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand. Recent discoveries of Agathis fossils from the Eocene of Argentine Patagonia have shown a broader distribution than previously supposed (Escapa & Catalano 2013).

The phylogeny of the family has long been a matter of debate, and all three of the possible phylogenetic hypotheses to explain the relationships among the three genera were postulated by studies around the turn of the 21st century. The matter seems to have been finally settled in a study by Escapa and Catalano (2013), who determined that the basal split is between Araucaria and the agathoid clade formed by Agathis and Wollemia. At a morphological level, Agathis and Wollemia differ from Araucaria in having winged seed; the wings on Wollemia seed are symmetric, those on Agathis seed are markedly asymmetric (Grant 2021). Within Agathis, A. australis occupies a basal position, sister to the remaining species as a result of an early-divergence event. The remaining species divide into two clades: one includes species endemic to New Caledonia, while the other comprises species with a wider distribution, including A. robusta (Escapa et al. 2018).

Identification of Agathis species is not a simple matter, and according to Earle (2026) ‘is most easily performed using a map’: most species have disjunct ranges, and leaf morphology is not much help, given its variability. Whitmore (1980) boasts about being able to show local foresters in Sulawesi the occurrence of what they would consider several ‘species’ on one leafy limb. The pollen cones and microsporophylls provide the best taxonomic characters to distinguish the species. No infrageneric sections have been proposed; some authors have proposed groupings based on distribution or microsporophyll characters, but without proposing a taxonomic structure for those groupings (e.g. Farjon 2017; Whitmore 1980).

Agathis, according to Whitmore (1975), ‘has the most tropical distribution of the genera of Coniferae’. As an essentially tropical genus, it has been mostly written off for temperate gardens. For Grimshaw and Bayton (2009), it is ‘almost entirely unknown to temperate gardeners’, and James Macdonald had prophesied in 1957 that ‘no tree belonging to this genus will develop in Great Britain out-of-doors’ (Macdonald et al. 1957). Krüssman, taking perhaps a more cosmopolitan view of what the temperate region consists of, listed several species in his Manual of Cultivated Conifers (1985), recommending them rather optimistically for Zone 9 (though the introduction of the Manual does point out that Great Britain’s Zone 9 should be considered Zone 8 for practical purposes). The true situation stands somewhere in between these views.

The exclusively tropical species are generally not in cultivation in the temperate zone, but two species found in higher latitudes are: A. australis and A. robusta, both treated here. A. australis is perhaps the better known of the two, due to its iconic status in its native New Zealand and the disastrous exploitation that almost drove it to extinction in the wild. It survives and even fruits in some gardens of the cool-temperate region that enjoy particularly mild conditions, such as in southwestern England and Ireland (proving James Macdonald wrong). A. robusta is more extensively cultivated as an ornamental worldwide, mostly in the warm-temperate regions, barely beyond the limits of our area. It is generally considered to be a hardier species, so it is not clear why it has not been successfully grown in milder gardens of the cool-temperate zone. Climate change may mean it will survive where it did not before, and trialling is recommended, as it is a fine ornamental tree as can be observed in parks and gardens of southern California and southern South America.

The nomenclature of the genus has been mired in confusion from the outset, when Rumphius applied to it the name Dammara in his Herbarium Amboinense (1741). The Malay name ‘damar’ is not applied exclusively to members of this genus. Salisbury coined the name Agathis in 1807. Lamarck included Rumphius’s two Dammara species in his Encyclopédie Méthodique in 1786, and Agathis was among the first generic names to be conserved at the International Botanical Congress of Vienna in 1905, lest it should be challenged by Dammara based on priority. However, Bakhuizen van den Brink argued in 1955 that Lamarck had not provided a generic description, and the names he cited were plainly quoted from Rumphius, so the name was not validly published by Lamarck. The conservation of Agathis Salisb. was therefore unnecessary. Link validated Rumphius’ generic name in 1822, but by then it was a superfluous name and hence illegitimate. The genus has featured other nomenclatural knots, particularly regarding the types of A. alba and A. dammara, too complex to cover here. For a comprehensive account, see Earle (2018) and (Farjon 2017). In 2006, Bobrov and Melikian proposed to split the genus based on the structure of the female reproductive organs, separating six species into a genus they named Salisburyodendron (Bobrov & Melikian 2006). Their proposal has not been adopted.

Across its range, Agathis has long been valued for its high-quality timber, which is straight-grained, attractive, and easy to work. Because the wood commands a premium price and the trees are relatively scarce, natural stands have been heavily exploited, and most current production now comes from plantations. The inner bark produces a pale, translucent resin known as Manila copal, which is soluble in alcohol. This resin was once harvested extensively, particularly between the 1920s and 1940s, for use in varnishes and linoleum, with annual production reaching tens of thousands of tonnes. Its commercial importance has since declined sharply, having been largely replaced by synthetic alternatives. However, it persists indirectly in the Kauri–butanol value, a standard measure of solvent strength based on how effectively a solvent dissolves copal. Among the species, Agathis australis has proven useful for dendrochronology, whereas most other species in the genus have been less suitable for tree-ring studies (Earle 2026).

Species of Agathis are affected by a range of insect pests and pathogens. Among the most notable is the seed-feeding moth Agathiphaga, recorded from Queensland and the New Hebrides. Reflecting the antiquity of Agathis, Agathiphaga species, also known as kauri moths, represent one of the earliest-diverging lineages within living Lepidoptera (Grant 2021). In Queensland, trees may also be attacked by the kauri scale insect Coniferococcus agathidis, a defoliator that can weaken trees and make them more susceptible to secondary infestations by wood-boring beetles such as Euthyrrhinus meditabundus. Another defoliating insect, though generally less damaging, is the kauri thrips Oxythrips agathidis, also known from Queensland. In addition to insect pests, Agathis species are subject to a variety of fungal diseases, which can further impact tree health (Whitmore 1977), and the ominously named Phytophthora agathidicida is a major threat to the remnant A. australis populations in New Zealand.

Salisbury’s name Agathis is derived from ancient Greek, ἀγαθίς (agathís, ‘ball of thread’), in reference to the appearance of the globose cones, in which the scale edges form quasi-parallel diagonal lines reminiscent of a ball of yarn. The etymology of the word is not known (Wiktionary 2026). Some references mistakenly state it derives from ᾰ̓γᾰθός (ăgăthós = ‘good, noble’), but the derivation is explicit in Salisbury’s protologue (1807). The common name in English, Kauri, is of Māori origin and originally applied to A. australis in New Zealand, before being adopted for other species in the genus. Juvenile trees are referred to in New Zealand and Australia as ‘rickers’, a word which originally referred to a thick pole for use in making a rick (a stack of hay), or for a spar in a boat (Wiktionary 2026). Kauris were used as ship masts by early colonists, hence the adoption of the term. Earle (2026) proposes a more exotic etymology, holding that timber blanks for masts and spars were called ‘rickers’ by British seamen, a corruption of ‘Riga’, the Baltic port in modern Latvia, from where such timbers were traditionally exported. Rickers are characterised by their tall, thick trunks scarcely free of branches and narrow, pyramidal crowns (Salmon 1996; New Zealand Plant Conservation Network 2026).

Identification keys for Agathis are mostly based on pollen cone microsporophyll characteristics and are of little value for gardeners (Grant 2021). Farjon (2017) considered it unnecessary to provide a key for species in cultivation, given that in his view A. australis is the only species grown ex situ, but overlooking the popularity of A. robusta in cultivation in South America and the United States (a fact he acknowledged in his treatment of the species). Simon Grant (2021) proposed an eminently practical key for species in cultivation, which consists in first looking for labels and, in their absence, asking the owner. For trees in the wild his key stipulates using a GPS device or, if the battery is flat, a map to determine location, which would rule out most possibilities due to the disjunct distribution of most species. Given the morphological variability of the leaves, these keys may be worth consideration!

Other Species

Aside from Agathis australis and A. robusta, a handful of other species are cultivated in botanical gardens or private collections in Australia. The two other species native to Australia (besides A. robusta), A. atropurpurea and A. microstachya from northeast Queensland, are grown in gardens in New South Wales and Victoria, where they resist mild frosts, and at The Tasmanian Arboretum (Devonport, Tasmania), where they tolerate –4°C under a canopy of Acacia dealbata (P. Parsons pers. comm. 2026). Bogle Arboretum in Victoria, which experiences temperatures down to –2°C, also has small trees of the tropical A. corbasonii, A. lanceolata, A. loranthifolia, A. microphylla, A. microstachya, and A. ovata, mostly doing well and around 3–9 m tall (D. Teese, pers. comm. 2026). Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, some 100 km west of Sydney, New South Wales, and at 1000 m elevation, holds A. microphylla, A. montana, A. moorei, and A. ovata (Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah 2026). A. ovata also survives at The Tasmanian Arboretum, where it was received as an advanced specimen several metres tall; it tolerates –4°C in the open on a south-facing slope (P. Parsons, pers. comm. 2026). Beyond Oceania, some of the tropical species grow in the San Francisco Botanical Garden, accessioned between 1996 and 2001: A. dammara, A. lanceolata, A. microstachya, and A. moorei (San Francisco Botanical Garden 2026). The identity of all these various accessions is taken at face value.

A notable specimen, understood to be Agathis dammara, has formed a massive tree in Argentina, near the town of La Plata (latitude 34.8°S). It is said to have been introduced around 1860 from the Malay Archipelago by Leonardo Pereyra Iraola, a wealthy landowner. Twelve trees were planted, of which only two reached maturity, and only one remains. It is known locally as ‘árbol de cristal’ (crystal tree), perhaps in reference to the resin exuded by the bark, which gleams like crystal in the moonlight. Pereyra Iraola’s property was expropriated by President Perón in 1948, and the tree now stands just outside the grounds of a police academy. It was declared a ‘Natural Monument’ in 1998 (Diario Hoy 2022). It measured 29 m × 162 cm dbh in 2002, and the single trunk forks at 11 m, forming two codominant stems (B. Cameron, pers. comm). It appears to be still growing, and in 2026 was estimated to be 36.7 m tall, with a 1.86 m dbh (pers. obs.). Two small trees received as A. dammara grow further south at Estancia La Constancia, near Mar del Plata (latitude 38.1°S), and seem to be surviving the cooler conditions there (J.I. Zurita, pers. comm. 2026). It is possible that they are misidentified, however, and may be A. robusta, as their origin is not known and there has been confusion regarding plants in cultivation in Argentina, which have been variously referred to as A. alba, A. dammara, and A. robusta.

No Agathis hybrids have been reported, but based on the behaviour in cultivation of the closely related genus Araucaria, hybridity should be considered when raising seedlings from cultivated trees where multiple species are grown together.

A simple key to help distinguish the two most widely cultivated species is provided below.