Drimys andina
Credits
Roderick Cameron (2025)
Recommended citation
Cameron, R. (2025), 'Drimys andina' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Common Names
- Canelo enano
- Canelo andino
Synonyms
- Drimys winteri var. andina Reiche
- Drimys winteri f. andina Hauman
- Drimys winteri var. quinoensis Kuntze
Shrub or small tree to 1.5 m, taller in cultivation. Bark thick, porous, smooth, grey. Branches thick, rugose, often contorted, twigs glabrous, pale brown, 3–5 mm in diameter near the tips. Leaves evenly and closely distributed along twigs, entire, slightly leathery, pale green to olive-green above, paler and glaucous beneath due to wax deposits that cover the stomata, obovate-oblong or -lanceolate or elliptic, 4–9 cm × 1.4–3 cm, base acute to attenuate, secondary veins 5–7 per side, ascending at an angle of 35–45°, barely prominent or obscured; petioles 5–18 mm long × 1–2 mm diameter. Flowers axillary, spread along the branchlets, single, rarely in umbels of up to 5 flowers, peduncles up to 25 mm long, pedicels 10–70 mm long; sepals 2, deciduous, 5–6 × 5–7 mm; petals 4–9, in 2 or more series, 8–18 × 2.5–5 mm, oblong to narrowly obovate, apex obtuse; stamens 15–40, filaments 1–2.5 mm long; carpels 3–8. Berry ovoid, 8–10 mm long, cream-coloured speckled with dark red at first, then purple and slightly fleshy when ripe. Seed kidney-shaped, 3.5–4 mm long, smooth, shiny, coffee-coloured. (Smith 1943; Rodríguez & Quezada 1991)
Distribution Argentina Southwest (Andes Mountains) Chile South (Nauhuelbuta Range, Andes Mountains)
Habitat In the Andes, at 800–1,500 m, it is found as undergrowth in high-elevation forests of Araucaria araucana, Nothofagus dombeyi, and N. pumilo. In the Nahuelbuta Range, at 600–1,400 m, where soil is clay or of volcanic origin, it occupies spaces that are more open and is co-dominant with other shrubs such as Desfontainia fulgens, Raukaua latevirens, and Chusquea culeou. In the most southerly locations of its range, it grows with Fitzroya cupresoides. In its natural habitat it spends the winter months covered in deep snow.
USDA Hardiness Zone 8b-9a
RHS Hardiness Rating H4
Conservation status Not evaluated (NE)
This is a distinct form found in higher elevations, in two delimited areas, one near the coast in the Nahuelbuta Mountains of Chile’s Coastal Range, and another further inland in the Andes. It grows to about 1 m tall, not exceeding 1.5 m in the wild (larger in cultivation), but flowers when only about a third of that size, retaining the flower size of Drimys winteri var. chilensis in miniature (Bean 1976; Hogan 2008). It differs from other Chilean species of Drimys by the presence of axillary flowers with long peduncles, disposed along the branches, rarely at the ends in clusters of 2, 3, or up to 5, but always axillary. (In D. winteri var. winteri they are mostly solitary, at the ends of branches, while in var. chilensis they are in multifloral umbels, also generally at the distal end.) Drimys andina is also the only species that is exclusively of shrubby habit: D. winteri var. winteri is sometimes of reduced stature in the southern part of its range, but the other species are definitely arborescent, reaching 20 m. In the population in the Andes, there is a clear gap of about 400 m in elevation in which Drimys species are not found at all, with D. winteri var. chilensis found below and D. andina above (Rodríguez & Quezada 1991; Reiche 1898).
Drimys andina was introduced by Harold Comber in 1926 from near the frontier between Chile and Argentina in Llanquihue Province, Región de Los Lagos, at 1.200 m. A plant in the walled garden at Nymans in Sussex, raised from his seeds, was about 1.5 m high and 3.5 m across in 1966 (Bean 1976). A plant from the same source was still alive in 2004 in the South American Garden at Wakehurst Place (Clennett 2004). Though it forms low shrubs in its harsh, high-elevation habitat, when grown in favourable conditions it reaches much larger proportions, as is the case with many Chilean woody plants (M. Gardner pers. comm. 2025). The Tree Register (2025) records a plant 4.5 m tall in Corsewall House, Scotland. At Westonbirt Arboretum, England, a plant grown from seed collected in 1996 on Volcán Hornopirén at 1,150 m (ICE 392) has formed a dense columnar shrub about 3 m tall; another growing next to it, from seed collected in 2009 in Puyehue National Park at 1,088 m (CHIX 47), has reached the same size (D. Crowley, pers. comm. 2025). The species has grown particularly well in the very acidic soils and humid conditions of Benmore Botanic Garden on the west coast of Scotland, as evidenced in the photos below (Gardner, Hechenleitner & Hepp 2015). In cultivation in Otway Ridge Arboretum in Victoria, Australia, it appears to behave in a fashion similar as in the wild, maintaining its dwarf shrub habit: a plant grown from seed collected in Chile in 1985 is barely 1 m tall in 2025 (Grant 2025).
The species was first described as a variety of D. winteri in 1898 by Karl Friedrich Reiche, a German botanist and director of the botany department of the National Museum of Natural History of Chile from 1896 to 1911. He based his diagnosis not on the morphology of the plants, but rather on the fact that it grew at a higher elevation than the arborescent form of D. winteri, with an altitudinal gap between the populations where Drimys did not grow (Reiche 1898). That same year, Kuntze described it, also as a variety of D. winteri, but based on its dwarf habit and floral characteristics; he used the epithet quinoensis, referring to Río Quino in Araucania Region, where it was found (Kuntze 1898). Hauman in 1923 classified it as a forma of D. winteri var. chilensis, but it was raised to species status by Rodrígeuz & Quezada in 1991, based on the distinctions outlined above. The epithet andina means ‘of the Andes’. The common names refer to its habit and habitat: canelo enano = dwarf canelo (canelo is the common name for D. winteri); canelo andino = Andean canelo.
