As far as I know, this hybrid does not exist and would be difficult to make as those two species are in different sections of the genus and not that related. The plant pictured looks like A. Angustifolia. I see no bidwillii characteristics.

A few years go supposed araucana x angustifolia seeds were available for sale online. I grew a bunch and none has characteristics of araucana.

It appears Kew is not listing such a hybrid being in their Living Collections at this time.

http://epic.kew.org/searchepic/detailquery.do?requiredPage=1&scientificName=araucaria&datasources=herbcat&datasources=ecbot&datasources=livcoll&categories=colln&detailDatasource=livcoll

https://twitter.com/plantgrafter/status/718536576498798592 Here's the Link to the post from the head plant grafter at Kew gardens, I messaged him myself for some info on it and he said it exhibits hybrid vigor. It seems to be in the nursery and not yet on display Embothrium. Salicaceae you are not wrong about it being difficult to make, the way I'm planning to do it is by using a bark patch graft technique to produce a low fruiting female Araucana (the cuttings have to come from epicormic shoots in the canopy) and hand pollinate using pollen from fallen male bunya cones. I will be personally documenting the hybridization of the mutant Angustifolia that I mentioned growing in brazil with some Bidwillii pollen. I have some suspicions that the Angustifolia is of hybrid origin due to the robustness of its leaves, let me know what you think?. (also included a picture of an exceptionally large fruiting cultivar that I will also hopefully gain access to in the near future). -Sam.

Again, I don't think it's possible as they are not that closely related. Angustifolia x araucana should work though.

They are in the same genus so related in that sense. hybrids between plants of entirely different genera are not unusual

Hello again Salicaceae, You may well be correct but i'm fairly stubborn so will give it a go haha, the way I see it is i'm going to be creating an Araucana mother tree through grafting to make a bunch of cold hardy araucaria hybrids anyway so trying Bidwillii seems worth a shot while i'm at it.

Todd C, glad i'm not the only one whose excited about this, I would be very interested in seeing what traits the hybrids would have; Monoecious or dioecious adult trees, cones disintegrating as in the Araucana or falling whole as the Bunya, hard or soft seed casing, tolerance of high humidity and low temps (or neither) etc. Here in NW England we are limited to Araucana and at a push angustifolia, It would be fantastic to have some more variation in the araucaria that could be grown at this latitude.

I think the genus is interesting I imagine dinosaurs walking next to strange conifers that looked like that. but wouldn't be my choice for a landscape tree. those cones could kill.

Yes definitely agree, I love the idea of developing these trees as a human food crop as part of an agroforestry system. Mixed plantations of faster growing more productive hybrids, underplanted with a mixed nitrogen fixing ground cover like lupins, vetch, clover etc.

Something really satisfying about Humans eating the same food as the Sauropods did tens of millions of years ago. The cones dropping would make Bunya hybrids a pretty risky landscape tree, A man in San Francisco had his skull caved in by one and sued the government for $5,000,000.

I'm wondering upon what the naysayers are basing their doubts? I can see no reason why these species shouldn't be cross compatible. They are very similar looking, have the same growth habit, come from very similar climatic conditions & have the same basic flower, fruit & seed structure. The fact that Bunyas have cryptocotylar germination & are mostly monoecious doesn't seem to preclude cross compatibility. Also all 3 have the same chromosome #: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4109723?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The 'sections' in botany have been traditionally decided on morphological & distribution grounds & don't always mean the species are not cross compatible. I'm giving my vote to the hybrids! :)

The argument could be made that Apples & Pears have the same chromosome number but are not cross compatible but this isn't completely true as crosses have been made between these at least experimentally. Having said this I wouldn't like to be the pollinator scrambling around in the top of any of the prickly Araucarias & it would probably have to be done with a telescopic pollen blower off a cherry picker!

Well and the fact that they have been separated from their common ancestor doesn't always matter. white pines for example tend to hybridize easily. except for sugar pine which doesn't want to seem to cross with closely related species. but it has been crossed with a Chinese white pine. you never know what will work.

That could mean that the Asian species is actually more closely related.

But geographically that doesn't make sense. if the pines in that group evolved from a common ancestor (and that is the idea of grouping them), then the Asian species was separated much longer ago. and look at the crassulaceae family all that stuff hybridizes even different genera.

Something I forgot to mention is that apples & pears won't graft successfully either despite having the same number of chromosomes. They will make temporary unions with apple on pear being longer lived than the other way round.....what I'm getting at is that perhaps graft compatibility may be an indication of pollen compatibility. The 3 Araucarias in question all intergraft easily & make smooth solid permanent unions as I & others have pictured in posts elsewhere here. Mind you we used to graft Pinus maximartinezii on P.pinea with success albeit making lumpy corky unions. I also grafted P.sabiniana & torreyana on P .pinea with nice smooth strong unions. I mention this as I fancy I've heard somewhere that P.pinea isn't X'able with any other pine, so perhaps my reasoning is actually wishful thinking! I was sent this picture of a supposed A. angustifolia X A.bidwillii. Looking at it closely it just may be as the branch ends are angustifolia like whereas the overall outline is very Bunya, what do others think?

Thank you for the input everyone, Peter thats great news to see the three large seeded species have the same number of chromosomes! makes sense really as you said; they are morphologically very similar trees and not too distantly related. Interesting that you bring up the graft compatibility too as I know that both Wollemia and Various Araucaria have been successfully grafted to Agathis, makes you wonder what possibilities there could be in hybrid breeding projects with these archaic conifers. Completely agree on the Hybrid picture you've posted, Angustifolia foliage with a bunya silhouette. We really are lucky that the southern hemisphere has stayed stable enough for relict population like these to survive virtually unchanged, considering the massive climate swings over the course of the last 100 million years not to mention the Asteroid (or comet) that wiped out a majority of life on Earth touching down not too far from the ranges of Araucana and Angustifolia. Clearly extremely tough, resilient trees worthy of a damn site more attention, especially seeing as with some carful selection they can produce prodigal amounts of food with nothing more than sunlight, rain and average un-fertillized soil.

Whatever is the actual case in this instance there are numerous other examples where the most closely related species within the same genus are not those now growing in the same region.

Clearly extremely tough, resilient trees

Araucaria araucana is having disease problems these days

Yes we humans have a knack for spreading geographically distant species all over the place with mixed results, I read an article a while ago about two different fern species that were genetically distinct from each other for 60million years creating offspring in France somewhere, so plants do seem to keep some level of compatibility even after extended genetic divergence. Yes Araucana is suffering disease problems isn't it, would be devastating if after surviving all this time the it goes the way of the American chestnut due to some newly introduced pathogen, hopefully due to it having high genetic diversity due to nearly all trees being a product of outcrossing and populations being fairly distinct from each other (Andean populations vs. Coastal) it will manage to shrug off whatever we throw at it.

"Whatever is the actual case in this instance there are numerous other examples where the most closely related species within the same genus are not those now growing in the same region" maybe so but in this case the two species in question are separated by a little body of water called the Pacific ocean. they are literally on opposite sides of the planet

Well I know a solution to the discussion: how bout a genetics graduate does a comparative analysis of the DNA of all three species & see how much difference there really is! Would have been a fantasy once however is not only reality now but a practical possibility or maybe probability as it sounds like a project that could be justifiably funded!

I can do that!

Provided that you cover costs and lab supplies and hours of work and analysis.

But I fear that many wholesaler are not interested in getting true results..

If a hybrid between these species does really exist, then show the evidence. That would include quantitative and genetic data.

As to genetic data on the three species, that already exists. There are several peer reviewed published papers on the topic for each...and data in GenBank. However, having the data a priori won‘t allow a person to predict hybridization. That only comes from empirical testing.

maybe so but in this case the two species in question are separated by a little body of water called the Pacific ocean. they are literally on opposite sides of the planet

As are species in other plant genera. Magnolia for instance. Which is also another ancient one.