Trouble in paradise: a monkey puzzle perplex!

Araucaria araucana on Batea Mahuida volcano

At first you aren't really perplexed: these outlandish trees are simply magnificent, and here at tree line more than a little awesome (to use that poor abused word in an appropriate context). You simply can't stop admiring them!

Here I am with Marcela Ferreyra--the extraordinary botanist who led our trip: if you ever have a chance to travel with Marcela, take it!

But don't let me distract you from these amazing trees. They don't just look like they lived in the Cretacous, they look as though they borrowed the armor from the dinosaurs that munched on them!

I could post dozens--maybe even a hundred or more--pictures of the Araucaria forest: it's enchanting and every tree seems to demand "take a picture of me you silly mortal!"

Here's another one!

The enormous roots are hugging a giant rock in this shot like hungry pythons.

How about this bonsaied specimen I dare not show Larry Jackel (my bonsai-master colleague at Denver Botanic Gardens) who would have demanded I dig it up and bring it back. I suppose if I were Elon Musk I could get away with it. Or Mr. Facebook who gets away with even more.

Marcela Ferreyra--intrepid tour leader--took a picture of ME taking the last picture: proofo positive I was there!

I promised you trouble: there it is. Everywhere in Argentina there are vast plantations of lodgepole and ponderosa pines. Just what a Coloradoan wants to see--the two most abundant trees of his back yard. Makes you almost ignore the volcano in the distance.

Here you can see an Araucaria swamped with masses of lodgepoles. I can't begin to imagine how these will impact the scenery (or worse, the actual monkey puzzles). The trees are still relatively small--but soon will be full of cones.

The dazzling effect of the native forest is already muffled in many places--just look at the seedlings in the foreground! What a disaster in the making. Argentina and Chile ban the export of even a single Araucaria seed--but meanwhile they're doing nothing (or worse, they're encouraging) exotic pine plantations. I was told many were funded by well meaning "carbon-credit" schemes. Talk about unintended consequences!

I finish with a few very different shots: these are pines spreading onto dry steppe: I don't know how the hell they grow there! But we passed countless mile of rich steppe vegetation that is being replaced by a sterile monoculture of pines (with nothing underneath).

Of course we saw lots of exotic flowers like lupines, california poppies, scotch broom and the entire spate of Eurasian and American weeds like Erodium cicutarium, Verbascum thapsus, Capsella bursa-pastoris, dandelions--you name it. The herbaceous plants however ubiquitous (the common storksbill had to be at every stop we made) and however gorgeous (the broom was really dazzling), altogether don't have a fraction of the impact of the rampant, hideous and frightening spread of alien forestation there.