Nothofagus antarctica

Sleety squalls, blowing westerly, gusting 61mph,  feels like -3.

We donned wet gear and walked down to the Botanics. It was quiet and wonderful. The wind roaring in the tall conifers - the great Deodar Cedrus that grows in the Himalayan foothills rock steady in the gale.

In the Queen Mother's garden I noticed a tree in its own stone enclosure. It was a 'nothofagus antarctica'. It was a bushy multi-trunked thing that you might have though was a cross between an alder and silver birch. It is sometimes called the Antarctic Beech although its is only distantly related to the European beech.

It is the most southerly growing tree in the world and occurs in Chile on Hoste Island at the very foot of Tierra del Fuego.

This nothofagus is closely related to the nothofagus of the vast temperate rainforest of New Zealand's South and North Islands. I've written about these here.



It was thought the nothofagus once grew on the super continent of Gondwana before Chile and New Zealand drifted apart although genetic evidence suggests the trees might have arrived in New Zealand later through ocean dispersal.

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the tree.