''Araucaria schmidii'' (Schmid araucaria) is a species of conifer in the family

Araucariaceae Araucariaceae – also known as araucarians – is an extremely ancient family of coniferous trees. The family achieved its maximum diversity during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and the early Cenozoic, when it was distributed almost worldw ...

. It is a medium to large tree growing up to 30 meters tall. It is found only in a small area on New Caledonia, with only one contiguous population in an area covering less than one square kilometer on the summit and highest slopes of

Mont Panié Mont Panié is a mountain on the island of Grande Terre in New Caledonia, a special collectivity of France located in the south-west Pacific Ocean. At , it is the island's highest point. Mont Panié is situated in the Chaîne Centrale mountain ...

in the north-east of the main island, Grande Terre, though a few scattered individuals may still be found on surrounding peaks. It is threatened by

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

. While the single remaining population is in a protected national park in a remote area, this area is still regularly visited by tourists, and IUCN has expressed concern that the entire population is at risk of being wiped out by a chance event such as the introduction of a fungal disease (e.g. ''

Phytophthora ''Phytophthora'' (from Greek (''phytón''), "plant" and (), "destruction"; "the plant-destroyer") is a genus of plant-damaging oomycetes (water molds), whose member species are capable of causing enormous economic losses on crops worldwide, a ...

'').

References

schmidii Endemic flora of New Caledonia Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by David John de Laubenfels {{conifer-stub