Nothofagus alpina (Poepp. & Endl.) Ørst.

As the taxonomic note suggests, Raulí has had a confused identity over the two centuries since European botanists first encountered the species. It is, however, a distinct and memorable tree, whose name in the native Mapuche language is useful. With its large deciduous leaves and many pairs of neatly parallel veins, Raulí is only really likely to recall Nothofagus alessandrii (which actually belongs in different section of the genus, Section Fuscospora) and the possible split N. rutila, a tree from further north in Chile (Valparaíso and Metropolitana regions) which was first described in 2000 (Ravenna 2000) but whose status as a good species is not yet universally accepted and which has probably not yet been introduced to Europe. Hybrids with N. obliqua are widely grown enough to have their own account in Trees and Shrubs Online, under N. × dodecaphleps.

Raulí was introduced to Britain in 1910 by F.R.S. Balfour of Dawyck in the Scottish Borders – ironically, one of few big gardens in Britain which are too cold in winter for the species to survive reliably. Balfour distributed plants from 1914 onwards (Bean 1981). One surviving tree, planted by Reginald Cory at Dyffryn in Glamorgan in 1912, must be from this introduction (Tree Register 2020), though since Raulí appears to be relatively long-lived for a Nothofagus in cultivation it is likely that a few more of the biggest specimens, which lack a known provenance, will also be from Balfour’s seed. There was also an introduction to Kew in 1913, when the Royal Botanic Gardens received a share of the seeds imported by the Société Dendrologique de France (Bean, W.J. (1914). The species was being sold by Veitch’s nursery by 1920, which is the year when a tree at Caerhays Castle in Cornwall (Tree Register 2020), since lost, was purchased.

Raulí has earned a quite widespread place in the UK and Ireland as an ornamental specimen, where there is enough room; the winter silhouette is elegant, the leaves flush briefly bronze in spring, and autumn colours are usually some shade of orange. Growth is most reliable in the milder and more humid western and northern parts; the species certainly dislikes hot dry summers, and damage to the leader in areas prone to late spring frosts may also result in trees with weak forks or heavy low limbs. It is grown as far north as Olav’s Wood on South Ronadsay on the Orkneys (Olav’s Wood 2020). The largest example, at Brodick Castle on the Isle of Arran, was 27 m × 1.69 m dbh in 2018 (Tree Register 2020), when its gigantic, columnar bole was hidden in a dense self-sown grove of New Zealand Griselinia trees; on the day of the author’s last visit, National Trust for Scotland volunteers were hard at work cutting these back. Another huge specimen, planted in 1928 at Mount Usher in Co. Wicklow, was 32 m × 1.47 cm dbh in 2015 (Tree Register 2020). The tallest – and perhaps the most beautiful in terms of the straightness of its trunk and its regularly radiating slender limbs – was planted around the middle of the 20th century by Lord Bradford in his garden at Weston Park in Staffordshire: this is an unexpectedly dry place for the tree to grow so freely, but this particular example is ideally situated next to a lake and in woodland shelter. In 2019 it was 35 m × 77 cm dbh (Tree Register 2020) and still seemed to be adding height quite fast. The typical straight-stemmed habit would make the Raulí a good candidate for avenue planting; there is a young avenue across the Hammersmith or Margravine Cemetery in west London, where the microclimate is probably too dry for the trees to reach monumental sizes (Tree Register 2020), but another, leading the short distance from the main drive to the mausoleum at Mount Stuart on Scotland’s Isle of Bute, may one day boast several giants (T. Christian pers. comm. 2020).

Like nearly all Nothofagus Raulí avoids alkaline soils in the wild, but the tree at Dyffryn, mentioned above, has thrived in quite a high pH. In 2013 there were also two large trees flourishing over well-weathered limestone at Merlewood in southern Cumbria (Tree Register 2020).

Raulí produces a fine timber, similar to that of European Beech, and has been trialled in a number of plantations in the UK and Ireland since the 1950s (Savill 2019). In these situations, particularly where summers are wet, natural regeneration is frequent (though not as abundant as for Nothofagus obliqua, with which plantation trees in England have spontaneously hybridised to give rise to N. × dodecaphleps); seedlings are moderately shade-tolerant (Mason et al. 2018). Plants can also be propagated by means of cuttings put into gentle heat in July or August (Bean 1981).

In more continental parts of Europe, in northern France, Germany, and Denmark, Raulí has not proved reliably hardy (Søndergaard 1997), though with a changing climate summer droughts may take over as the main limiting factor; Søndergaard reported one 8 m specimen suriviving in 1997 in the Bergen Botanical Garden in Norway, and there are records of three small examples on Belgische Dendrologie’s list of notable trees in Belgium (Belgische Dendrologie 2020). It is cultivated at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle (Washington Park Arboretum 2013). Remarkably little information is available on the species’ success as an ornamental in other suitable parts of the world. Online resources include herbarium specimens collected from the grounds of the Forest Research Institute in Rotorua and at Orton Bradley Park near Canterbury in New Zealand, and a photo of foliage of an example in the Dunedin Botanic Garden in that same country. It was planted at Hackfalls Arboretum, also in New Zealand, in 1961 and 1966 (Hackfalls Arboretum 2020).

Since 2009, Raulí in Britain, especially in forestry plantations, have proved vulnerable to fatal infections by the pathogen Phytophthora pseudosyringae (Mason et al. 2018), though less so than tends to be the case for Nothofagus obliqua.