Araucaria Juss.

Monoecious or sometimes (temporarily?) dioecious small to immense trees mostly with limited and very formal branching elements consisting of long sweeping primary branches in false whorls along the main trunk often turned apically upward candelabra-like, then in most species only one additional rank of branches. The first branches sooner or later deciduous and in open situations replaced by adventitious branches thus producing a variety of double-crown forms. Apex of a resting shoot a cluster of incompletely formed leaves. Leaves spirally placed, broadly attached, crowded, multi-veined when broad and even sometimes in the needle-shaped examples, becoming uniform in size along a branch, but sometimes quite variable in the juvenile forms, amphistomatic. Pollen cones subtended by a cluster of reduced, leaf-like, sterile bracts, often broadened at their bases and where the mature leaves are needle-like these bracts are at least somewhat broader and flatter. Fertile bract of the seed cone broad and often extended laterally into membranous wings, the apex provided with a prominent narrow spur above the thickened apical margin. Seed-bearing scale only partly fused with the associated bract, its apex a free acute scale-like 'ligule' ± reaching the base of the spur on the fertile bract. Seed coat fused with its scale.