Saxegothaea Lindl.

Saxegothaea was discovered for modern botany by the English plant collector William Lobb in 1846, while exploring southern Chile for the Veitch Nurseries. Lobb initially thought he had discovered some sort of yew (Taxus), but its distinctiveness was soon recognised and in 1851 Lindley described the genus Saxegothaea to accommodate the new discovery, naming it in honour of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, consort of Queen Victoria (Bean 1981).

The almost exclusively southern hemisphere conifer family Podocarpaceae, in which this genus is typically placed, exhibits some fascinating differences from the northern hemisphere conifers while bringing together more variation in macromorphological features than would be expected in a single family north of the equator. In this regard, Saxegothaea would make an excellent poster child for the Podocarpaceae: Lindley was moved to observe that it combines ‘the male flowers of a Podocarp, the females of [an Agathis], the fruit of a Juniper, the seed of a Dacrydium, and the habit of a Yew’ (Lindley 1851). This simile perfectly explains the difficulty botanists have had in placing this genus. Lindley himself regarded it as a link between those conifers with seeds subtended by fleshy structures, such as the yews and true podocarps, and those with true cones such as the firs and cypresses, and for a while after its discovery this view prevailed. Hence, for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries Saxegothaea was placed either in Podocarpaceae or Taxaceae according to taste.

As the 20th century advanced new and improved scientific methods were brought to bear on this question, but rather than proving that the genus did belong to a particular family, it is probably more accurate to say that it has been proven not to belong to Taxaceae! Naturally this has been interpreted to support the majority view that it belongs to Podocarpaceae (Earle 2025), but this opinion has never been unanimously held and further theories have been proposed. All conifers are wind pollinated, and all members of Podocarpaceae (and Pinaceae) have developed sacci (specialised wing-like structures attached to pollen grains to aid pollen dispersal); all, that is, except Saxegothaea (Khan et al. 2023). This absence of sacci led Erdtman (1965) to propose transferring Saxegothaea to Araucariaceae, a move which seems never to have gained much support, but a proposal to place it in its own family, Saxegothaeaceae, has enjoyed minority support since first suggested by Henri Gaussen (Gaussen 1974).

Advanced scientific techniques have not conclusively settled the matter. Various phylogenomic studies have found Saxegothaea to occupy an isolated, basal position in the extant Podocarpaceae (e.g. Yang et al. 2022) with some authors concluding that it is ‘the oldest genus in the family […] part of an ancient lineage endemic to South America’ (Khan et al. 2023). A primitive basal position is also supported by the chromosome count (2n = 24) which is shared by just one other genus in the family (Afrocarpus) (Page 2024). Together with its distinctive morphology, these findings have been interpreted in some quarters to support the view that the genus should be treated in its own family (e.g. Page 2024) but the mainstream view continues to place Saxegothaea in Podocarpaceae, albeit in its own tribe, Saxegothaeeae, in the Podocarpoideae subfamily which includes Podocarpus itself (Yang et al. 2022).

As a wild plant Saxegothaea conspicua – the sole species – exhibits some fascinating similarities with the northern hemisphere yews (Taxus) although the two genera are not closely related (Yang et al. 2022). Besides the obvious likeness of their foliage, both are shade tolerant secondary succession species adapted to form sub-canopies beneath climax vegetation (for example Nothofagus and Fitzroya above Saxegothaea in South America, and Fagus and Abies above Taxus in Eurasia). Both genera have dense, heavy wood, and develop comparable architectures as a consequence of this and their ecological niches; Taxus is well known for developing hollow trunks from a relatively young age, a feature also common in old Saxegothaea, and within these hollow trunks both genera develop structures akin to aerial roots but fulfilling the function of secondary stems (Enright & Hill 1995; Hageneder 2011; Cano, Godoy & Soto 2014).

Saxegothaea has been too infrequently propagated by seed for there to be any reliable data available. Interestingly, very little is known about its dispersal; most Podocarpaceae are distributed by birds or rodents which are attracted to the brightly coloured, fleshy part of the seed cone subtending the seed itself, but Saxegothaea has no such adaptation and observations in the wild suggest that seed is probably wind/gravity dispersed, albeit over short distances in the very dense forests it inhabits (Enright & Hill 1995). A tree growing at Kilmacurragh Botanic Garden in Ireland is one of few old trees in cultivation known to self-seed; its progeny frequently germinate around about the parent, but never very far from it (S. O’Brien pers. comm. 2025). Experience at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh suggests that treated normally (sown in a standard seed compost and lightly covered with grit, then placed in a cold frame over winter) seed will germinate without difficulty the following spring. Vegetative propagation has probably been the default method since the species was first introduced to cultivation: semi-ripe heel cuttings, the leaves removed in the lower half and the base treated with a standard rooting hormone, placed in any good cutting medium with bottom heat and high humidity, can be expected to root with success rates of over 90% (Gardner et al. 2006).