Saxegothaea conspicua Lindl.

Saxegothaea conspicua is a most unusual conifer. It is a member of the southern hemisphere podocarp family, which contains more than its fair share of oddities, but even in such company this genus is something of an outlier. Widely considered a primitive member of the family, it appears, at first glance, to have cherry-picked aspects of itself from across the entire diversity of conifers. The 19th century British botanist John Lindley said ‘Saxegothaea may be described as a genus with the male flowers of a Podocarp, the females of a Dammar [Agathis], the fruit of a Juniper, the seed of a Dacrydium, and the habit of a Yew’ (Lindley 1851).

Indeed, once committed to memory it should be impossible to confuse Saxegothaea with any other plant. In its native range it shares the common name Mañio, or some permutation of Mañio, with Podocarpus nubigenus, which it frequently grows with in the wild, and P. salignus, which has led to some confusion. It has also been confused with another Chilean conifer, Prumnopitys andina, from which it differs in the thicker, curved leaves, darker green above with whitish stomatal bands on the undersides (Gardner et al. 2006). Unfortunately several UK and Irish nurseries have for many years now been selling plants labelled Saxegothaea which are actually P. andina (pers. obs.). The same features which distinguish Saxegothaea from P. andina also distinguish it from Taxus (Mitchell 1972).

Not only is Saxegothaea distinctive, but given the right conditions it is also handsome and easily cultivated. Introduced to cultivation in the middle of the 19th century when Britain was on the cusp of conifer-mania, and named for Queen Victoria’s celebrated consort Prince Albert, Saxegothaea should have been a shoo-in, but after an initial flurry of interest it seems to have been relegated to the lower ranks of the horticultural psyche – a collectors’ item if it was sought at all – and for the past century and a half it has remained stubbornly rare.

Early commentators ascribed this failure to climatic factors (Veitch 1906; Elwes & Henry 1906–1913). Saxegothaea is native to the Valdivian temperate rainforests of southern Chile and adjacent parts of Argentina, where the annual rainfall far exceeds that of even the wettest parts of the UK and Ireland, and to thrive in cultivation it requires mild winters, cool summers without excessive heat, high humidity, and year-round precipitation. Consequently, as for so many other southern hemisphere conifers, only the mildest and wettest fringes of these islands particularly suited Saxegothaea, which elsewhere was sensitive to low temperatures and to dry positions, and when faced with these would grow infuriatingly slowly – an example at Kew was 1.2 m tall in 1913 when aged over 30 years (Stapf 1916).

Even in a conducive climate the naturally slow growth rate may have dampened what little remained of the initial enthusiasm, and there is no denying that a struggling Saxegothaea can be quite ugly, so perhaps many growers grubbed it out as patience expired. This would help to explain, at least in part, why so few old specimens remain in gardens, in contrast with the relative success of more recent introductions.

The Veitchian plant collector William Lobb discovered Saxegothaea in southern Chile in 1846 – probably around the Comau Fjord, a part of the Chilean mainland roughly level with the northern end of the island of Chiloé (M. Gardner pers. comm. 2025) – and introduced it to British cultivation the following year (Elwes & Henry 1906–1913). It is not clear whether Lobb introduced seeds, seedlings, or both, and indeed very little appears to have been recorded in literature about its propagation. Anybody who has seen this tree in intact native forest will have realised how difficult a task seed collection must be: large trunks ascend high into the forest canopy where the tiny cones are produced only in the outer reaches of the crown, safely out of reach from any would-be seed collector (who would do better to search in disturbed or secondary, rather than virgin forest (pers. obs.)).

In cultivation established trees produce a few cones most years, but bumper crops are infrequent, often occurring in response to plants suddenly receiving more light or after some other disturbance event; disturbance may be an important factor affecting cone production and recruitment in the very dense, very dark forests where this species occurs naturally, but more studies are needed on this and dispersal strategies, both of which are poorly understood (Enright & Hill 1995).

Seedlings, as opposed to seed, are easier to come by. In 2013 the present author was part of a collecting team from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) which, after some time collecting vegetative propagation material from the edges of a forest access road, encountered a fallen tree trunk covered in moss that had become the perfect germination bed for hundreds of Saxegothaea seedlings. These were judiciously thinned out and a proportion couriered back to Edinburgh, introducing many new genotypes to cultivation which were distributed among the four RBGE gardens and several sites participating in the International Conifer Conservation Programme (ICCP).

These and other introductions, mostly made through the RBGE since the late 1980s, have contributed much to our contemporary understanding of Saxegothaea as a cultivated plant. Hardier than several of its associates – and probably benefitting from a warmer climate than prevailed in Victorian Britain – not only is it shade tolerant but it appears that shade can be beneficial in areas prone to warm and dry spells (this is true of other temperate rainforest coinfers like some of the podocarps, and secondary succession conifers like Cathaya argyrophylla). Of the many plants distributed from Edinburgh by the ICCP the best are doubtless those growing in very wet climates, with the next most important factor being woodland conditions. Those planted in woodland settings often out-perform those planted in open positions in the same locality (pers. obs.). Trees grown in the open can thrive perfectly well so long as the soils do not dry out and there is some shelter from strong winds; a group of particularly fine young trees at the Howick Arboretum (Northumberland, UK) in just such a situation is illustrated below.

Where it thrives Saxegothaea makes a handsome small tree and it ultimately deserves to be far more widely planted than at present. In a letter to his employer penned shortly after he discovered Saxegothaea, William Lobb remarked on its ornamental qualities and the usefulness of its timber (Lobb in Lindley 1851). Indeed, Saxegothaea has long been valued for its strong, durable, yellowish timber, which is particularly good for fine carpentry work (Elwes & Henry 1906–1913). It was also prized by European sailors for ship repairs. Captain Fitzroy, who commanded HMS Beagle on the voyage made famous by Charles Darwin, later wrote of the value of ‘Mañu’ from Chiloé for this purpose; from his description we may be confident he was speaking of Saxegothaea, which he describes as forming ‘a tree of great dimensions, tall and straight […] and next to [Fitzroya] is the best for spars that the island of Chiloé produces’ (Fitzroy in Elwes & Henry 1906–1913). Thankfully Saxegothaea has not suffered the same devastating losses as the iconic Fitzroya, but coastal populations in particular have certainly been much depleted since the mid 19th century. Loggers tend to favour younger trees for their straight stems – in old age Saxegothaea tend to become contorted and develop additional stems – but when targeted for firewood there is surely less discrimination, and continued selective felling and pressures on habitat have caused the species to be assessed as Near Threatened (Thomas 2019).

The development of contorted and additional stems is just one of several parallels between Saxegothaea and members of the northern hemisphere genus Taxus – see the genus article for further comment on this point. In cultivation however the parallels are few. Introduced from niche habitats in the wild, Taxus has become one of the great generalist conifers of temperate gardens, lending its considerable genetic plasticity to the development of huge numbers of cultivars differing in habit, size, foliage colour and arrangement. Even following multiple new introductions in recent decades the cultivated population of Saxegothaea is remarkably uniform and, in all the time it has been a garden subject, only a single cultivar has been selected, and that in the second decade of the 21st century (Auders & Spicer 2012). Saxegothaea does possess something of yew’s adaptability, though. Providing the soils are moist it will grow on various types. The best extant trees in cultivation are those on deep, moderately fertile, moist but well-drained acid soils in milder, wetter, western regions of the UK and across Ireland, but there are curious records from gardens on alkaline soils, including chalk soils, too (Tree Register 2025).

On the island of Ireland there were for many years two superb trees at Kilmacurragh, 18 m tall × 68 cm dbh and 16 m × 73 cm in 2014 (Tree Register 2025); one sadly had to be removed after becoming infected with Phytopthora ramorum, but the other thrives still and ‘merrily seeds about’ (S. O’Brien pers. comm. 2025). On the west coast of Scotland there is a fine tree at Stonefield, 12.8 m × 79 cm in 2024. Devon and Cornwall have several good examples, including that which for Bean was ‘by far the finest’ and which is now the tallest of all, growing at the Prescott Pinetum. It was 19.7 m × 70 cm in 2024 (Tree Register 2025; Bean 1981).

More surprising records include good trees in warmer, drier parts of eastern England. At Bedgebury National Pinetum, Kent, there is a tree 16.2 m tall in 2024 from a 1925 planting; at Pampisford, Cambridgeshire (on shallow soils above solid chalk) an old tree was 8 m tall in 2013 (Tree Register 2025). Young, wild-sourced material from the ICCP is establishing well in both locations, and in other collections the length and breadth of the UK (pers. obs.)

As is so often the case, records from elsewhere are scant. In Australia there are examples at Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, Blue Mountains Botanic Gardens, Otway Ridge Arboretum and the Tasmanian Arboretum; in New Zealand there are examples at Eastwood Hill (John Beetham Instagram post 8 July 2021). It has a limited circulation in the nursery trade in both countries and is also exchanged by collectors.

In North America only a small area in the Pacific Northwest is likely to be conducive to general cultivation, but again records are few. There are passing references to its cultivation here in numerous databases, blogs, social media accounts and so forth, but nothing to suggest any notable specimens nor to shine a light on the species’ cultural history here.

Saxegothaea would almost certainly have arrived in mainland Europe via the Veitch Nurseries in the early 19th century but is unlikely to have survived a continental climate for very long. Several gardens in northwest France offer an ideal climate for its cultivation, but still the species is rarely grown here; some gardens have young plants establishing well (such as at Kestellic, Brittany – pers. obs. 2022) but older, sizeable examples are not in evidence.

Saxegothaea has almost always been grown as a specimen tree, but a hedge of the species was planted at Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, New South Wales, prior to 2012 when it was seen by John Grimshaw. Unfortunately a combination of Phytophthora and great heat in 2019 killed it (M. Murray pers. comm. 2025). An experimental hedge was planted around the reconstructed Botanics Cottage in Edinburgh in 2016, using material gathered on the 2013 CGM expedition to Chile (Gardner et al. 2018). Despite careful tending this hedge has taken a very long time to establish and nearly ten years later is only just beginning to thicken up on the shaded, northern side of the building, but it does look very beautiful when the new growth flushes in spring (H. Wilson pers. comm. 2025). It might be better suited to this purpose in a wetter climate.

For comments on propagation see the genus article.