English: Base of trunk of 6m high arborescent specimen of Latua pubiflora (the sorcerers’ tree) in Logan Botanic Garden (RBGE) Port Logan, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland (human hand placed to show scale). This is probably the finest and largest specimen of this rare, Chilean endemic in the U.K. : a small tree, the trunk of which measures 37cm in girth at the base. It was raised from seed at Logan and is some 20 years old. The climate at Logan is ideal for this species - mild and maritime with abundant rainfall - like that in its native southern Chile. The plant is growing in an upper terrace of a West-facing slope, surrounded by other small trees, ferns and Gunnera manicata.

When grown in the U.K., Latua usually forms a medium-sized shrub, the multiple trunks of which display a broadly reticulated pattern of criss-crossing ribbons of bark tissue of a tawny colour - a type of bark which has developed gradually via the increasing development of corky striations, followed by corky fissures in young, green bark.

By contrast, the bark of the trunk of this magnificent specimen has reached the final phase of development, in which broad, tawny ribbons of tissue have largely given way to a finer reticulated pattern of a more grey-green colour - less distinctive and more generically tree-bark-like than the bark of the usual shrubby specimens to be seen elsewhere in the U.K.